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THE UNIT BOOKS 
No. 1 1 SEPTEMBER 1903 


THE MARBLE FAUN 


The Unit Books 

No. 1 21 units 51 cts. 

L 


PUBLISHER’S NOTE 
This edition is published under a 
special arrangement with Messrs. 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., the 
authorized publishers qfthe works 
qf Nathaniel Hawthorne 


THE 

MARBLE FAUN 


OR 

THE ROMANCE OF 
MONTE BENI 

BY 

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 



NEW YORK 

HOWARD WILFORD BELL 
259 FIFTH AVENUE 
1903 

a. 


f ' TZ3 I 


Copyright 1903 



BY Howard Wiltord Bell 






Two Copies Received 


DEC 18 iS03 

Copyright tntry 
CLASS cu XXa No. I 

s ^ --j 2^- ;i 

COPY A. I 


li 


The Heiktzemann Press Boston 


THE 

ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


CHAPTER I 

Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon, Donatello 

Four individuals, in whose fortunes we should be glad 
to interest the reader, happened to be standing in one of the 
saloons of the sculpture gallery in the Capitol at Rome. 
It was that room (the first, after ascending the staircase) 
in the centre of which reclines the noble and most pathetic 
figure of the Dying Gladiator, just sinking into his death- 
swoon. Around the walls stand the Antinous, the Amazon, 
the Lycian Apollo, the Juno; all famous productions of 
antique sculpture, and still shining in the undiminished 
majesty and beauty of their ideal life, although the marble 
that embodies them is yellow with time, and perhaps cor- 
roded by the damp earth in which they lay buried for cen- 
turies. Here, likewise, is seen a symbol (as apt at this 
moment as it was two thousand years ago) of the Human 
Soul, with its choice of Innocence or Evil close at hand, 
in the pretty figure of a child, clasping a dove to her bosom, 
but assaulted by a snake. 

From one of the windows of this saloon, we may see a 
flight of broad stone steps, descending alongside the antique 
and massive foundation of the Capitol, towards the battered 
triumphal arch of Septimius Severus, right below. Farther 
on, the eye skirts along the edge of the desolate Forum 
(where Roman washerwomen hang out their linen to the 
sun), passing over a shapeless confusion of modern edifices, 
piled rudely up with ancient brick and stone, and over the 

5 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


domes of Christian churches, built on the old pavements of 
heathen temples, and supported by the very pillars that 
once upheld them. At a distance beyond — yet but a little 
Vvay, considering how much history is heaped into the inter- 
vening space — rises the great sweep of the Coliseum, with 
the blue sky brightening through its upper tier of arches. 
Far off, the view is shut in by the Alban Mountains, look- 
ing just the same, amid all this decay and change, as when 
Romulus gazed thitherward over his half-finished wall. 

We glance hastily at these things, — at this bright sky, 
and those blue distant mountains, and at the ruins, Etruscan, 
Roman, Christian, venerable with a threefold antiquity, and 
at the company of world-famous statues in the saloon, — in 
the hope of putting the reader into that state of feeling 
which is experienced oftenest at Rome. It is a vague sense 
of ponderous remembrances; a perception of such weight 
and density in a by-gone life, of which this spot was the 
centre, that the present moment is pressed down or crowded 
out, and our individual affairs and interests are but half as 
real here as elsewhere. Viewed through this medium, our 
narrative — into which are woven some airy and unsubstan- 
tial threads, intermixed with others, twisted out of the com- 
monest stuff of human existence — may seem not widely 
different from the texture of all our lives. 

Side by side with the massiveness of the Roman Past, 
all matters that we handle or dream of nowadays look evan- 
escent and visionary alike. 

It might be that the four persons whom we are seeking 
to introduce were conscious of this dreamy character of 
the present, as compared with the square blocks of granite 
wherewith the Romans built their lives. Perhaps it even 
contributed to the fanciful merriment which was just now 
their mood. When we find ourselves fading into shadows 
and unrealities, it seems hardly worth while to be sad, but 

6 


MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO 

rather to laugh as gayly as we may, and ask little reason 
wherefore. 

Of these four friends of ours, three were artists, or con- 
nected with art; and, at this moment, they had been simul- 
taneously struck by a resemblance between one of the 
antique statues, a well-known masterpiece of Grecian 
sculpture, and a young Italian, the fourth member of their 
party. 

**You must needs confess, Kenyon,” said a dark-eyed 
young woman, whom her friends called Miriam, “that you 
never chiselled out of marble, nor wrought in clay, a more 
vivid likeness than this, cmining a bust-maker as you think 
yourself. The portraiture is perfect in character, senti- 
ment, and feature. If it were a picture, the resemblance 
might be half illusive and imaginary; but here, in this 
Pentelic marble, it is a substantial fact, and may be tested 
by absolute touch and measurement. Our friend Donatello 
is the very Faun of Praxiteles. Is it not true, Hilda 

“Not quite — almost — yes, I really think so,” replied 
Hilda, a slender, brown-haired. New England girl, whose 
perceptions of form and expression were wonderfully clear 
and delicate. “If there is any difference between the two 
faces, the reason may be, I suppose, that the Faun dwelt in 
woods and fields, and consorted with his like ; whereas, Don- 
atello has known cities a little, and such people as ourselves. 
But the resemblance is very close, and very strange.” 

“Not so strange,” whispered Miriam, mischievously; “for 
no Faun in Arcadia was ever a greater simpleton than Don- 
atello. He has hardly a man’s share of wit, small as that 
may be. It is a pity there are no longer any of this con- 
genial race of rustic creatures for our friend to consort 
with !” 

“Hush, naughty one!” returned Hilda. “You are very 

7 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


ungrateful, for you well know he has wit enough to worship 
you, at all events.” 

“Then the greater fool he!” said Miriam, so bitterly that 
Hilda’s quiet eyes were somewhat startled. 

“Donatello, my dear friend,” said Kenyon, in Italian, 
“pray gratify us all by taking the exact attitude of this 
statue.” 

The young man laughed, and threw himself into the 
position in which the statue has been standing for two or 
three thousand years. In truth, allowing for the difference 
of costume, and if a lion’s skin could have been substituted 
for his modern talma, and a rustic pipe for his stick, Dona- 
tello might have figured perfectly as the marble Faun, mi- 
raculously softened into flesh and blood. 

“Yes; the resemblance is wonderful,” observed Kenyon, 
after examining the marble and the man with the accuracy 
of a sculptor’s eye. “There is one point, however, or, 
rather, two points, in respect to which our friend Donatello’s 
abundant curls will not permit us to say whether the like- 
ness is carried into minute detail.” 

And the sculptor directed the attention of the party to 
the ears of the beautiful statue which they were contem- 
plating. 

But we must do more than merely refer to this exquisite 
work of art; it must be described, however inadequate may 
be the effort to express its magic peculiarity in words. 

The Faun is the marble image of a young man, leaning 
his right arm on the trunk or stump of a tree, one hand 
hangs carelessly by his side; in the other he holds the frag- 
ment of a pipe, or some such sylvan instrument of music. 
His only garment — a lion’s skin, with the claws upon his 
shoulder — falls half-way down his back, leaving the limbs 
and entire front of the figure nude. The form, thus dis- 
played, is marvellously graceful, but has a fuller and more 

8 


MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO 

rounded outline, more flesh, and less of heroic muscle, than 
the old sculptors were wont to assign to their types of mas- 
culine beauty. The character of the face corresponds 
with the figure; it is most agreeable in outline and feature, 
but rounded and somewhat voluptuously developed, espe- 
cially about the throat and chin ; the nose is almost straight, 
but very slightly curves inward, thereby acquiring an inde- 
scribable charm of geniality and humor. The mouth, with 
its full yet delicate lips, seems so nearly to smile outright, 
that it calls forth a responsive smile. The whole statue — 
unlike anything else that ever was wrought in that severe 
material of marble — conveys the idea of an amiable and 
sensual creature, easy, mirthfid, apt for jollity, yet not in- 
capable of being touched by pathos. It is impossible to 
gaze long at this stone image without conceiving a kindly 
sentiment towards it, as if its substance were warm to the 
touch, and imbued with actual life. It comes very close to 
some of our pleasantest sympathies. 

Perhaps it is the very lack of moral severity, of any high 
and heroic ingredient in the character of the Faun, that 
makes it so delightful an object to the human eye and to 
the frailty of the human heart. The being here represented 
is endowed with no principle of virtue, and would be inca- 
pable of comprehending such; but he would be true and 
honest by dint of his simplicity. We should expect from 
him no sacrifice or effort for an abstract cause; there is not 
an atom of martyr’s stuff in all that softened marble; but 
he has a capacity for strong and warm attachment, and 
might act devotedly through its impulse, and even die for it 
at need. It is possible, too, that the Faun might be edu- 
cated through the medium of his emotions, so that the 
coarser animal portion of his nature might eventually be 
thrown into the background, though never utterly expelled. 

The animal nature, indeed, is a most essential part of the 

9 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

Faun’s composition; for the characteristics of the brute 
creation meet and combine with those of humanity in this 
strange yet true and natural conception of antique poetry 
and art. Praxiteles has subtly diffused throughout his work 
that mute mystery which so hopelessly perplexes us when- 
ever we attempt to gain an intellectual or sympathetic knowl- 
edge of the lower orders of creation. The riddle is indicated, 
however, only by two definite signs; these are the two ears 
of the Faun, which are leaf -shaped, terminating in little 
peaks, like those of some species of animals. Though not 
so seen in the marble, they are probably to be considered as 
clothed in fine, downy fur. In the coarser representations 
of this class of mythological creatures, there is another 
token of brute kindred, — a certain caudal appendage; 
which, if the Faun of Praxiteles must be supposed to pos- 
sess it at all, is hidden by the lion’s skin that forms his 
garment. The pointed and furry ears, therefore, are the 
sole indications of his wild, forest nature. 

Only a sculptor of the finest imagination, the most deli- 
cate taste, the sweetest feeling, and the rarest artistic skill — 
in a word, a sculptor and a poet too — could have first 
dreamed of a Faun in this guise, and then have succeeded 
in imprisoning the sportive and frisky thing in marble. 
Neither man nor animal, and yet no monster, but a being 
in whom both races meet on friendly ground. The idea 
grows coarse as we handle it, and hardens in our grasp. 
But, if the spectator broods long over the statue, he will 
be conscious of its spell; all the pleasantness of sylvan life, 
all the genial and happy characteristics of creatures that 
dwell in woods and fields, will seem to be mingled and 
kneaded into one substance, along with the kindred qualities 
in the human soul. Trees, grass, flowers, woodland stream- 
lets, cattle, deer, and unsophisticated man. The essence 

10 


MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO 

of aU these was compressed long ago, and still exists, within 
that discolored marble surface of the Faun of Praxiteles. 

And, after all, the idea may have been no dream, but 
rather a poet’s reminiscence of a period when man’s affinity 
with nature was more strict, and his fellowship with every 
living thing more intimate and dear. 


11 


CHAPTER II 
The Faun 

“Donatello/’ playfully cried Miriam, “do not leave us 
in this perplexity! Shake aside those brown curls, my 
friend, and let us see whether this marvellous resemblance 
extends to the very tips of the ears. If so, we shall like you 
all the better I” 

“No, no, dearest signorina,” answered Donatello, laugh- 
ing, but with a certain earnestness. “I entreat you to take 
the tips of my ears for granted.” As he spoke, the young 
Italian made a skip and jump, light enough for a veritable 
Faun; so as to place himself quite beyond the reach of the 
fair hand that W'as outstretched, as if to settle the matter 
by actual examination. “I shall be like a wolf of the Apen- 
nines,” he continued, taking his stand on the other side of 
the Dying Gladiator, “if you touch my ears ever so softly. 
None of my race could endure it. It has always been a 
tender point with my forefathers and me.” 

He spoke in Italian, with the Tuscan rusticity of accent, 
and an unshaped sort of utterance, betokening that he must 
heretofore have been chiefly conversant with rural people. 

“Well, well,” said Miriam, “your tender point — your two 
tender points, if you have them — shall be safe, so far as I 
am concerned. But how strange this likeness is, after all! 
and how delightful, if it really includes the pointed ears ! 
Oh, it is impossible, of course,” she continued, in English, 
“with a real and commonplace young man like Donatello; 
but you see how this peculiarity defines the position of the 

12 


THE FAUN 


Faun; and^ while putting him where he cannot exactly as- 
sert his brotherhood, still disposes us kindly towards the 
kindred creature. He is not supernatural, but just on the 
verge of nature, and yet within it. What is the nameless 
charm of this idea, Hilda You can feel it more delicately 
than I.” 

“It perplexes me,” said Hilda, thoughtfully, and shrink- 
ing a little ; “neither do I quite like to think about it.” 

“But surely,” said Kenyon, “you agree with Miriam and 
me that there is something very touching and impressive in 
this statue of the Faun. In some long-past age, he must 
really have existed. Nature needed, and still needs, this 
beautiful creature; standing betwixt man and animal, sym- 
pathizing with each, comprehending the speech of either 
race, and interpreting the whole existence of one to the 
other. What a pity that he has forever vanished from the 
hard and dusty paths of life, — unless,” added the sculptor, 
in a sportive whisper, “Donatello be actually he !” 

“You cannot conceive how this fantasy takes hold of 
me,” responded Miriam, between jest and earnest. “Im- 
agine, now, a real being, similar to this mythic Faun; how 
happy, how genial, how satisfactory would be his life, en- 
j oying the warm, sensuous, earthy side of nature ; revelling 
in the merriment of woods and streams; living as our four- 
footed kindred do, — as mankind did in its innocent child- 
hood; before sin, sorrow or morality itself had ever been 
thought of! Ah! Kenyon, if Hilda and you and I — if I, 
at least — had pointed ears ! For I suppose the Faun had no 
conscience, no remorse, no burden on the heart, no trouble- 
some recollections of any sort; no dark future either.” 

“What a tragic tone was that last, Miriam!” said the 
sculptor; and, looking into her face, he was startled to be- 
hold it pale and tear-stained. “How suddenly this mood 
has come over you!” 


13 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


“Let it go as it came^” said Miriam^ “like a thunder- 
shower in this Roman sky. All is sunshine again_, you see !” 

Donatello’s refraetoriness as regarded his ears had evi- 
dently eost him something, and he now eame close to 
Miriam’s side, gazing at her with an appealing air, as if to 
solicit forgiveness. His mute, helpless gesture of entreaty 
had something pathetic in it, and yet might well enough 
excite a laugh, so like it was to what you may see in the 
aspect of a hound when he thinks himself in fault or dis- 
grace. It was difficult to make out the character of this 
young man. So full of animal life as he was, so joyous in 
his deportment, so handsome, so physically well-developed, 
he made no impression of incompleteness, of maimed or 
stinted nature. And yet, in social intercourse, these familiar 
friends of his habitually and instinctively allowed for him, 
as for a child or some other lawless thing, exacting no strict^ 
obedience to conventional rules, and hardly noticing his ec- 
centricities enough to pardon them. There was an indefin- 
able characteristic about Donatello that set him outside of 
rules. 

He caught Miriam’s hand, kissed it, and gazed into her 
eyes without saying a word. She smiled, and bestowed on 
him a little careless caress, singularly like what one would 
give to a pet dog when he puts himself in the way to receive 
it. Not that it was so decided a caress either, but only the 
merest touch, somewhere between a pat and a tap of the 
finger ; it might be a mark of fondness, or perhaps a playful 
pretence of punishment. At all events, it appeared to afford 
Donatello exquisite pleasure ; insomuch that he danced quite 
round the wooden railing that fences in the Dying Gladia- 
tor. 

“It is the very step of the Dancing Faun,” said Miriam, 
apart, to Hilda. “What a child, or what a simpleton, he is ! 
I continually find myself treating Donatello as if he were 

14 


THE FAUN 


the merest unfledged chicken ; and yet he can claim no such 
privileges in the right of his tender age, for he is at least — 
how old should you think him, Hilda?” 

“Twenty years, perhaps,” replied Hilda, glancing at 
Donatello; “but, indeed, I cannot tell; hardly so old, on 
second thoughts, or possibly older. He has nothing to do 
with time, but has a look of eternal youth in his face.” 

“All underwitted people have that look,” said Miriam, 
scornfully. 

“Donatello has certainly the gift of eternal youth, as 
Hilda suggests,” observed Kenyon, laughing, “for, judging 
by the date of this statue, which, I am more and more con- 
vinced, Praxiteles carved on purpose for him, he must be 
at least twenty-five centuries old, and he still looks as young 
as ever.” 

“What age have you, Donatello ?” asked Miriam. 

“Signorina, I do not know,” he answered; “no great age, 
however; for I have only lived since I met you.” 

“Now, what old man of society could have turned a silly 
compliment more smartly than that!” exclaimed Miriam. 
“Nature and art are just at one sometimes. But what a 
happy ignorance is this of our friend Donatello! Not to 
know his own age! It is equivalent to being immortal on 
earth. If I could only forget mine!” 

“It is too soon to wish that,” observed the sculptor; “you 
are scarcely older than Donatello looks.” 

“I shall be content, then,” rejoined Miriam, “ if I could 
only forget one day of all my life.” Then she seemed to 
repent of this allusion, and hastily added, “A woman s days 
are so tedious that it is a boon to leave even one of them 
out of the account.” 

The foregoing conversation had been carried on in a mood 
in which all imaginative people, whether artists or poets, 
love to indulge. In this frame of mind, they sometimes find 

15 


KOMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


V : y -oundest truths side by side with the idlest jest, 
and .^er one or the other, apparently without distinguish- 
ing which is the most valuable, or assigning any consider 
able value to either. The resemblance between the marbh 
^^lun and their living companion had made a deep, half 
t ous, half-mirthful impression on these three friends, and 
had taken them into a certain airy region, lifting up, as i 
is so pleasant to feel them lifted, their heavy earthly fee. 
from the actual soil of life. The world had been set afloat 
as it were, for a moment, and relieved them, for just S( 
long, of all customary responsibility for what they though’ 
and said. 

It might be under this influence — or, perhaps, becaus< 
ulptors always abuse one another’s works — that Kenyoi 
threw in a criticism upon the Dying Gladiator. 

T used to admire this statue exceedingly,” he remarked 
“but, latterly, I find myself getting weary and annoyed 
that the man should be such a length of time leaning on his 
arm in the very act of death. If he is so terribly hurt, why 
does he not sink down and die without further ado? Flit- 
; g moments, imminent emergencies, imperceptible inter- 
v .i? between two breaths, ought not to be incrusted with the 
et'-rnal repose of marble; in any sculptural subject, there 
id aid be a moral stand-still, since there must of necessity; 

; a physical one. Otherwise, it is like flinging a block ol 
- -ble up into the air, and, by some trick of enchantment, 
cau.sing it to stick there. You feel that it ought to come 
dovm, and are dissatisfied that it does not obey the natural 
law.” 

I see,” said Miriam, mischievously, “you think tha 
sculpture should be a sort of fossilizing process. But, ii 
trulh, your frozen art has nothing like the scope and free 
dom of Hilda’s and mine. In painting there is no simila 
objection to the representation of brief snatches of time 

16 


THE FAUN 


perhaps^ because a story can, be so much more fully told in 
picture, and buttressed about with circumstances that give 
it an epoch. For instance, a painter never would have sent 
down yonder Faun out of his far antiquity, lonely and 
desolate, with no companion to keep his simple heart warm.” 

Ah, the Faun!” cried Hilda, with a little gesture of im- 
patience; “I have been looking at him too long; and now, 
instead of a beautiful statue, immortally young, I see only a 
corroded and discolored stone. This change is very apt to 
occur in statues.” 

“And a similar one in pictures, surely,” retorted the 
sculptor. “It is the spectator’s mood that transfigures the 
Transfiguration itself. I defy any painter to move and ele- 
vate me without my own consent and assistance.” 

“Then you are deficient of a sense,” said Miriam. 

The party now strayed onward from hall to hall of that 
rich gallery, pausing here and there, to look at the multitude 
of noble and lovely shapes, which have been dug up out of 
the deep grave in which old Rome lies buried. And still, 
the realization of the antique Faun, in the person of Don- 
atello, gave a more vivid character to all these marble 
ghosts. Why should not each statue grow warm with life! 
Antinous might lift his brow, and tell us why he is forever 
sad. The Lycian Apollo might strike his lyre; and, at the 
first vibration, that other Faun in red marble, who keeps 
up a motionless dance, should frisk gayly forth, leading 
yonder Satyrs, with shaggy goat-shanks, to clatter their 
little hoofs upon the floor, and all join hands with Don- 
atello! Bacchus, too, a rosy flush diffusing itself over his 
time-stained surface, could come down from his pedestal, 
and offer a cluster of purple grapes to Donatello’s lips; be- 
cause the god recognizes him as the woodland elf who so 
often shared his revels. And here, in this sarcophagus, the 
exquisitely carved figures might assume life, and chase one 

17 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


another round its verge with that wild merriment which is 
so strangely represented on those old burial colFers: though 
still with some subtile allusion to death, carefully veiled, but 
forever peeping forth amid emblems of mirth and riot. 

As the four friends descended the stairs, however, their 
play of fancy subsided into a much more sombre mood; a 
result apt to follow upon such exhilaration as that which 
had so recently taken possession of them. 

“Do you know,” said Miriam, confidentially to Hilda, “I 
doubt the reality of this likeness of Donatello to the Faun, 
which we have been talking so much about? To say the 
truth, it never struck me so forcibly as it did Kenyon and 
yourself, though I gave in to whatever you were pleased to 
fancy, for the sake of a moment’s mirth and wonder.” 

‘T was certainly in earnest, and you seemed equally so,” 
replied Hilda, glancing back at Donatello, as if to reassure 
herself of the resemblance. “But faces change so much, 
from hour to hour, that the same set of features has often 
no keeping with itself ; to an eye, at least, which looks at 
expression more than outline. How sad and sombre he has 
grown all of a sudden!” 

“Angry too, methinks ! nay, it is anger much more than 
sadness,” said Miriam. “I have seen Donatello in this mood 
once or twice before. If you consider him well, you will 
observe an odd mixture of the bulldog, or some other equally 
fierce brute, in our friend’s composition; a trait of savage- 
ness hardly to be expected in such a gentle creature as he 
usually is. Donatello is a very strange young man. I wish 
he would not haunt my footsteps so continually.” 

“You have bewitched the poor lad,” said the sculptor, 
laughing. “You have a faculty of bewitching people, and 
it is providing you with a singular train of followers. I see 
another of them behind yonder pillar ; and it is his presence 
that has aroused Donatello’s wrath.” 


18 


THE FAUN 


They had now emerged from the gateway of the palace; 
and partly concealed by one of the pillars of the portico 
stood a figure such as may often be encountered in the 
streets and piazzas of Rome, and nowhere else. He looked 
as if he might just have stepped out of a picture, and, in 
truth, was likely enough to find his way into a dozen pic- 
tures ; being no other than one of those living models, dark, 
bushy-bearded, wild of aspect and attire, whom artists con- 
vert into saints or assassins, according as their pictorial pur- 
poses demand. 

“Miriam,” whispered Hilda, a little startled, “it is your 
model!” 


19 


CHAPTER III 

Subterranean Reminiscences 

Miriam’s model has so important a connection with onr 
story^ that it is essential to describe the singular mode of 
his first appearance, and how he subsequently became a self- 
appointed follower of the young female artist. In the first 
place, however, we must devote a page or two to certain 
peculiarities in the position of Miriam herself. 

There was an ambiguity about this young lady, which, 
though it did not necessarily imply anything wrong, would 
have operated unfavorably as regarded her reception in 
society, anywhere but in Rome. The truth was, that no- 
body knew anything about Miriam, either for good or evil. 
She had made her appearance without introduction, had 
taken a studio, put her card upon the door, and showed 
very considerable talent as a painter in oils. Her fellow- 
professors of the brush, it is true, showered abundant 
criticisms upon her pictures, allowing them to be well enough 
for the idle half-efforts of an amateur, but lacking both the 
trained skill and the practice that distinguish the works of 
a true artist. 

Nevertheless, be their faults what they might, Miriam’s 
pictures met with good acceptance among the patrons of 
modern art. Whatever technical merit they lacked, its 
absence was more than supplied by a warmth and passion- 
ateness, which she had the faculty of putting into her pro- 
ductions, and which all the world could feel. Her nature 

20 


SUBTERRANEAN REMINISCENCES 


had a great deal of color^ and, in accordance with it, so 
likewise had her pictures. 

Miriam had great apparent freedom of intercourse; her 
manners were so far from evincing shyness, that it seemed 
easy to become acquainted with her, and not difficult to 
develop a casual acquaintance into intimacy. Such, at 
least, was the impression which she made, upon brief con- 
tact, but not such the ultimate conclusion of those who really 
sought to know her. So airy, free, and affable was Mir- 
iam’s deportment towards all who came within her sphere, 
that possibly they might never be conscious of the fact; 
but so it was, that they did not get on, and were seldom 
any further advanced into her good graces to-day than 
yesterday. By some subtile quality, she kept people at a 
distance, without so much as letting them know that they 
were excluded from her inner circle. She resembled one of 
those images of light, which conjurers evoke and cause to 
shine before us, in apparent tangibility, only an arm’s-length 
beyond our grasp: we make a step in advance, expecting 
to seize the illusion, but find it still precisely so far out of 
our reach. Finally, society began to recognize the impos- 
sibility of getting nearer to Miriam, and gruffly acquiesced. 

There were two persons, however, whom she appeared 
to acknowledge as friends in the closer and truer sense of 
the word; and both of these more favored individuals did 
credit to Miriam’s selection. One was a young American 
sculptor, of high promise and rapidly increasing celebrity; 
the other, a girl of the same country, a painter like Miriam 
herself, but in a widely different sphere of art. Her heart 
flowed out towards these two; she requited herself by their 
society and friendship (and especially by Hilda’s) for all 
the loneliness with which, as regarded the rest of the world, 
she chose to be surrounded. Her two friends were conscious 
of the strong, yearning grasp which Miriam laid upon them, 

21 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


and gave her their affection in full measure; Hilda^ indeed, 
responding with the fervency of a girl’s first friendship, 
and Kenyon with a manly regard, in which there was noth- 
ing akin to what is distinctively called love. 

A sort of intimacy subsequently grew up between these 
three friends and a fourth individual; it was a young Ital- 
ian, who, casually visiting Rome, had been attracted by the 
beauty which Miriam possessed in a remarkable degree. 
He had sought her, followed her, and insisted, with simple 
perseverance, upon being admitted at least to her acquaint- 
ance; a boon which had been granted, when a more artful 
character, seeking it by a more subtle mode of pursuit, would 
probably have failed to obtain it. This young man, though 
anything but intellectually brilliant, had many agreeable 
characteristics which won him the kindly and half -contemp- 
tuous regard of Miriam and her two friends. It was he 
whom they called Donatello, and whose wonderful resem- 
blance to the Faun of Praxiteles forms the keynote of our 
narrative. 

Such was the position in which we find Miriam some few 
months after her establishment at Rome. It must be added, 
however, that the world did not permit her to hide her 
antecedents without making her the subject of a good deal 
of conjecture; as was natural enough, considering the abun- 
dance of her personal charms, and the degree of notice that 
she attracted as an artist. There were many stories about 
Miriam’s origin and previous life, some of which had a very 
probable air, while others were evidently wild and romantic 
fables. We cite a few, leaving the reader to designate 
them either under the probable or the romantic head. 

It was said, for example, that Miriam was the daughter 
and heiress of a great Jewish banker (an idea perhaps 
suggested by a certain rich Oriental character in her face), 
and had fled from her paternal home to escape a union 

22 


SUBTERRANEAN REMINISCENCES 

with a cousin^ the heir of another of that golden brother- 
hood; the object being, to retain their vast accumulation 
of wealth within the family. Another story hinted that she 
was a German princess, whom, for reasons of state, it was 
proposed to give in marriage either to a decrepit sovereign, 
or a prince still in his cradle. According to a third state- 
ment, she was the offspring of a Southern American planter, 
who had given her an elaborate education and endowed her 
with his wealth; but the one burning drop of African blood 
in her veins so affected her with a sense of ignominy, that 
she relinquished all and fled her country. By still another 
account she was the lady of an English nobleman; and, 
out of mere love and honor of art, had thrown aside the 
splendor of her rank, and come to seek a subsistence by 
her pencil in a Roman studio. 

In all the above cases, the fable seemed to be instigated 
by the large and bounteous impression which Miriam in- 
variably made, as if necessity and she could have nothing 
to do with one another. Whatever deprivations she under- 
went must needs be voluntary. But there were other sur- 
mises, taking such a commonplace view as that Miriam was 
the daughter of a merchant or financier, who had been 
ruined in a great commercial crisis; and, possessing a taste 
for art, she had attempted to support herself by the pencil, 
in preference to the alternative of going out as governess. 

Be these things how they might, Miriam, fair as she 
looked, was plucked up out of a mystery, and had its roots 
still clinging to her. She was a beautiful and attractive 
woman, but based, as it were, upon a cloud, and all sur- 
rounded with misty substance; so that the result was to 
render her sprite-like in her most ordinary manifestations. 
This was the case even in respect to Kenyon and Hilda, 
her especial friends. But such was the effect of Miriam’s 
natural language, her generosity, kindliness, and native 

23 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

truth of character, that these two received her as a dear 
friend into their hearts, taking her good qualities as evident 
and genuine, and never imagining that what was hidden 
must be theref ore evil. 

We now proceed with our narrative. 

The same party of friends, whom we have seen at the 
sculpture gallery of the Capitol, chanced to have gone to- 
gether, some months before, to the catacomb of St. Calixtus. 
They went j oyously down into that vast tomb, and wandered 
by torchlight through a sort of dream, in which reminis- 
cences of church-aisles and grimy cellars — and chiefly the 
latter — seemed to be broken into fragments, and hopelessly 
intermingled. The intricate passages along which they fol- 
lowed their guide had been hewn, in some forgotten age, 
out of a dark-red, crumbly stone. On either side were 
horizontal niches, wFere, if they held their torches closely, 
the shape of a human body was discernible in white ashes, 
into which the entire mortality of a man or woman had 
resolved itself. Among all this extinct dust, there might 
perchance be a thigh-bone, which crumbled at a touch; or 
possibly a skull, grinning at its own wretched plight, as is 
the ugly and empty habit of the thing. 

Sometimes their gloomy pathway tended upward, so that, 
through a crevice, a little daylight glimmered down upon 
them, or even a streak of sunshine peeped into a burial 
niche; then again, they went downward by gradual descent, 
or by abrupt, rudely hewn steps, into deeper and deeper 
recesses of the earth. Here and there the narrow and tor- 
tuous passages widened somewhat, developing themselves 
into small chapels; which once, no doubt, had been adorned 
with marble-work and lighted with ever-burning lamps and 
tapers. All such illumination and ornament, however, had 
long since been extinguished and stript away; except, in- 
deed, that the low roofs of a few of these ancient sites of 

24 


SUBTERRANEAN REMINISCENCES 


worship were covered with dingy stucco^ and frescoed with 
scriptural scenes and subjects, in the dreariest stage of ruin. 

In one such chapel, the guide showed them a low arch, 
beneath which the body of St. Cecilia had been buried after 
her martyrdom, and where it lay till a sculptor saw it, and 
rendered it forever beautiful in marble. 

In a similar spot they found two sarcophagi, one contain- 
ing a skeleton, and the other a shrivelled body, which still 
wore the garments of its former lifetime. 

“How dismal all this is !“ said Hilda, shuddering. “I do 
not know why we came here, nor why we should stay a 
moment longer.” 

“I hate it all!” cried Donatello, with peculiar energy. 
“Dear friends, let us hasten back into the blessed daylight!” 

From the first, Donatello had shown little fancy for the 
expedition; for, like most Italians, and in especial accord- 
ance with the law of his own simple and physically happy 
nature, this young man had an infinite repugnance to graves 
and skulls, and to all that ghastliness which the Gothic mind 
loves to associate with the idea of death. He shuddered, 
and looked fearfully round, drawing nearer to Miriam, 
whose attractive influence alone had enticed him into that 
gloomy region. 

“What a child you are, poor Donatello!” she observed, 
with the freedom which she always used towards him. 
“You are afraid of ghosts!” 

“Yes, signorina; terribly afraid!” said the truthful Don- 
atello. 

“I also believe in ghosts,” answered Miriam, “and could 
tremble at them, in a suitable place. But these sepulchres 
are so old, and these skulls and white ashes so very dry, 
that methinks they have ceased to be haunted. The most 
awful idea connected with the catacombs is their inter- 
minable extent, and the possibility of going astray into this 

25 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


labyrinth of darkness^ which broods around the little glim- 
mer of our tapers/’ 

“Has any one ever been lost here?” asked Kenyon of 
the guide. 

“Surely, signor; one, no longer ago than my father’s 
time,” said the guide; and he added, with the air of a 
man who believed what he was telling, “but the first that 
went astray here was a pagan of old Rome, who hid himself 
in order to spy out and betray the blessed saints, who then 
dwelt and worshipped in these dismal places. You have 
heard the story, signor? A miracle was wrought upon the 
accursed one; and, ever since (for fifteen centuries at least), 
he has been groping in the darkness, seeking his way out 
of the catacomb.” 

“Has he ever been seen?” asked Hilda, who had great 
and tremulous faith in marvels of this kind. 

“These eyes of mine never beheld him, signorina; the 
saints forbid!” answered the guide. “But it is well known 
that he watches near parties that come into the catacomb, 
especially if they be heretics, hoping to lead some straggler 
astray. What this lost wretch pines for, almost as much as 
for the blessed sunshine, is a companion to be miserable 
with him.” 

“Such an intense desire for sympathy indicates something 
amiable in the poor fellow, at all events,” observed Kenyon. 

They had now reached a larger chapel than those here- 
tofore seen; it was of a circular shape, and, though hewn out 
of the solid mass of red sandstone, had pillars, and a carved 
roof, and other tokens of a regular architectural design. 
Nevertheless, considered as a church, it was exceedingly 
minute, being scarcely twice a man’s stature in height, and 
only two or three paces from wall to wall; and while their 
collected torches illuminated this one small, consecrated 
spot, the great darkness spread all round it, like that im- 

26 


SUBTERRANEAN REMINISCENCES 


menser mystery which envelops our little life^ and into which 
friends vanish from us^ one by one. 

“Whyj where is Miriam?” cried Hilda. 

The party gazed hurriedly from face to face, and became 
aware' that one of their party had vanished into the great 
darkness, even while they were shuddering at the remote 
possibility of such a misfortune. 


CHAPTER IV 


The Spectre of the Catacomb 

“Surely, she cannot be lost!” exclaimed Kenyon. “It is 
but a moment since she was speaking.” 

“No, no!” said Hilda, in great alarm. “She was behind 
us all; and it is a long while since we have heard her 
voice !” 

“Torches ! torches !” cried Donatello, desperately. “I 
will seek her, be the darkness ever so dismal !” 

But the guide held him back, and assured them all that 
there was no possibility of assisting their lost companion, 
unless by shouting at the very top of their voices. As the 
somid would go very far along these close and narrow pas- 
sages, there was a fair probability that Miriam might hear 
the call, and be able to retrace her steps. 

Accordingly, they all — Kenyon with his bass voice; Don- 
atello with his tenor; the guide with that high and hard 
Italian cry, which makes the streets of Rome so resonant; 
and Hilda with her slender scream, piercing farther than 
the united uproar of the rest — began to shriek, halloo, and 
bellow, with the utmost force of their lungs. And, not to 
prolong the reader’s suspense (for we do not particularly 
seek to interest him in this scene, telling it only on account 
of the trouble and strange entanglement which followed), 
they soon heard a responsive call, in a female voice. 

“It was the signorina!” cried Donatello, joyfully. 

“Yes; it was certainly dear Miriam’s voice,” said Hilda. 
“And here she comes ! Thank Heaven ! Thank Heaven !” 


28 


THE SPECTRE OF THE CATACOMB 


The figure of their friend was now discernible by her own 
torchlight^ approaching out of one of the cavernous pas- 
sages. Miriam came forward^ but not with the eagerness 
and tremulous joy of a fearful girl^ just rescued from a 
labyrinth of gloomy mystery. She made no immediate 
response to their inquiries and tumultuous congratulations; 
and, as they afterwards remembered, there was something 
absorbed, thoughtful, and self-concentrated in her deport- 
ment. She looked pale, as well she might, and held her 
torch with a nervous grasp, the tremor of which was seen 
in the irregular twinkling of the flame. This last was the 
chief perceptible sign of any recent agitation or alarm. 

“Dearest, dearest Miriam,” exclaimed Hilda, throwing 
her arms about her friend, “where have you been straying 
from us ? Blessed be Providence, which has rescued you out 
of that miserable darkness !” 

“Hush, dear Hilda!” whispered Miriam, with a strange 
little laugh. “Are you quite sure that it was Heaven’s 
guidance which brought me back. If so, it was by an odd 
messenger, as you will confess. See; there he stands.” 

Startled at Miriam’s words and manner, Hilda gazed into 
the duskiness whither she pointed, and there beheld a figure 
standing just on the doubtful limit of obscurity, at the 
threshold of the small, illuminated chapel. Kenyon dis- 
cerned him at the same instant, and drew nearer with his 
torch; although the guide attempted to dissuade him, aver- 
ring that, once beyond the consecrated precincts of the 
chapel, the apparition would have power to tear him limb 
from limb. It struck the sculptor, however, when he after- 
wards recurred to these circumstances, that the guide mani- 
fested no such apprehension on his own account as he pro- 
fessed on behalf of others; for he kept pace with Kenyon 
as the latter approached the figure, though still endeavoring 
to restrain him. 


29 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

In fine, they both drew near enough to get as good a view 
of the spectre as the smoky light of their torches, struggling 
with the massive gloom, could suppl}^ 

The stranger was of exceedingly picturesque, and even 
melodramatic aspect. He was clad in a voluminous cloak, 
that seemed to be made of a buffalo’s hide, and a pair of 
those goat-skin breeches, with the hair outward, which are 
still commonly worn by the peasants of the Roman Cam- 
pagna. In this garb, they look like antique Satyrs ; and, in 
truth, the Spectre of the Catacomb might have represented 
the last survivor of that vanished race, hiding himself in 
sepulchral gloom, and mourning over his lost life of woods 
and streams. 

Furthermore, he had on a broad-brimmed, conical hat, 
beneath the shadow of which a wild visage was indistinctly 
seen, floating away, as it were, into a dusky wilderness of 
mustache and beard. His eyes winked, and turned uneasily 
from the torches, like a creature to whom midnight would 
be more congenial than noonday. 

On the whole, the spectre might have made a considerable 
impression on the sculptor’s nerves, only that he was in the 
habit of observing similar figures, almost every day, reclin- 
ing on the Spanish steps, and waiting for some artist to 
invite them within the magic realm of picture. Nor, even 
thus familiarized with the stranger’s peculiarities of appear- 
ance, could Kenyon help wondering to see such a personage, 
shaping himself so suddenly out of the void darkness of 
the catacomb. 

“What are you.^” said the sculptor, advancing his torch 
nearer. “And how long have you been wandering here?” 

“A thousand and five hundred years !” muttered the guide, 
loud enough to be heard by all the party. “It is the old 
pagan phantom that I told you of, who sought to betray the 
blessed saints!” 


30 


THE SPECTRE OF THE CATACOMB 

“Yes; it is a phantom!” cried Donatello, with a shudder. 
“Ah, dearest signorina, what a fearful thing has beset you 
in those dark corridors 1” 

“Nonsense, Donatello,” said the sculptor. “The man is 
no more a phantom than yourself. The only marvel is, how 
he comes to be hiding himself in the catacomb. Possibly, 
our, guide might solve the riddle.” 

The spectre himself here settled the point of his tan- 
gibility, at all events, and physical substance, by approach- 
ing a step nearer, and laying his hand on Kenyon’s arm. 

“Inquire not what I am, nor wherefore I abide in the 
darkness,” said he, in a hoarse, harsh voice, as if a great 
deal of damp were clustering in his throat. “Henceforth, 
I am nothing but a shadow behind her footsteps. She 
came to me when I sought her not. She has called me forth, 
and must abide the consequences of my reappearance in 
the world.” 

“Holy Virgin! I wish the signorina joy of her prize,” 
said the guide, half to himself. “And in any case, the cata- 
comb is well rid of him.” 

We need follow the scene no further. So much is essen- 
tial to the subsequent narrative, that, during the short period 
while astray in those tortuous passages, Miriam had en- 
countered an unknown man, and led him forth with her, 
or was guided back by him, first into the torchlight, thence 
into the sunshine. 

It was the further singularity of this affair, that the con- 
nection, thus briefly and casually formed, did not terminate 
with the incident that gave it birth. As if her service to 
him, or his service to her, whichever it might be, had given 
him an indefeasible claim on Miriam’s regard and protec- 
tion, the Spectre of the Catacomb never long allowed her to 
lose sight of him, from that day forward. He haunted her 
footsteps with more than the customary persistency of 

31 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


Italian mendicants, when once they have recognized a bene- 
factor. For days together, it is true, he occasionally 
vanished, but always reappeared, gliding after her through 
the narrow streets, or climbing the hundred steps of her 
staircase and sitting at her threshold. 

Being often admitted to her studio, he left his features, 
or some shadow or reminiscence of them, in many of her 
sketches and pictures. The moral atmosphere of these pro- 
ductions was thereby so influenced, that rival painters pro- 
nounced it a case of hopeless mannerism, which would 
destroy all Miriam’s prospects of true excellence in art. 

The story of this adventure spread abroad, and made its 
way beyond the usual gossip of the Forestieri, even into 
Italian circles, where, enhanced by a still potent spirit of 
superstition, it grew far more wonderful than as above 
recounted. Thence, it came back among the Anglo-Saxons, 
and was communicated to the German artists, who so richly 
supplied it with romantic ornaments and excrescences, after 
their fashion, that it became a fantasy worthy of Tieck or 
Hoffmann. For nobody has any conscience about adding 
to the improbabilities of a marvellous tale. 

The most reasonable version of the incident, that could 
anywise be rendered acceptable to the auditors, was sub- 
stantially the one suggested by the guide of the catacomb, 
in his allusion to the legend of Memmius. This man, or 
demon, of man-demon, was a spy during the persecutions of 
the early Christians, probably under the Emperor Diocle- 
tian, and penetrated into the catacomb of St. Calixtus, with 
the malignant purpose of tracing out the hiding-places of 
the refugees. But, while he stole craftily through those 
dark corridors, he chanced to come upon a little chapel, 
where tapers were burning before an altar and a crucifix, 
and a priest was in the performance of his sacred office. 
By divine indulgence, there was a single moment’s grace 

32 


THE SPECTRE OF THE CATACOMB 


allowed to Memmius^ during which, had he been capable 
of Christian faith and love, he might have knelt before 
the cross, and received the holy light into his soul, and so 
have been blest forever. But he resisted the sacred impulse. 
As soon, therefore, as that one moment had glided by, the 
light of the consecrated tapers, which represent all truth, 
bewildered the wretched man with everlasting error, and 
the blessed cross itself was stamped as a seal upon his heart, 
so that it should never open to receive conviction. 

Thenceforth, this heathen Memmius has haunted the wide 
and dreary precincts of the catacomb, seeking, as some 
say, to beguile new victims into his own misery ; but, accord- 
ing to other statements, endeavoring to prevail on any un- 
wary visitor to take him by the hand, and guide him out into 
the daylight. Should his wiles and entreaties take effect, 
however, the man-demon would remain only a little while 
above ground. He would gratify his fiendish malignity 
by perpetrating signal mischief on his benefactor, and per- 
liaps bringing some old pestilence or other forgotten and 
long-buried evil on society ; or, possibly, teaching the modern 
world some decayed and dusty kind of crime, which the 
antique Romans knew; and then would hasten back to the 
catacomb, which, after so long haunting it, has grown his 
most congenial home. 

Miriam herself, with her chosen friends, the sculptor and 
the gentle Hilda, often laughed at the monstrous fictions 
that had gone abroad in reference to her adventure. Her 
two confidants (for such they were, on all ordinary subjects) 
had not failed to ask an explanation of the mystery, since 
undeniably a mystery there was, and one sufficiently per- 
plexing in itself, without any help from the imaginative 
faculty. And, sometimes responding to their inquiries with 
a melancholy sort of playfulness, Miriam let her fancy run 

83 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

off into wilder fables than any which German ingenuity or 
Italian superstition had contrived. 

For example, with a strange air of seriousness over all 
her face, only belied by a laughing gleam in her dark eyes, 
she would aver that the spectre (who had been an artist 
in his mortal lifetime) had promised to teach her a long 
lost, but invaluable, secret of old Roman fresco-painting. 
The knowledge of this process would place Miriam at the 
head of modern art; the sole condition being agreed upon, 
that she should return with him into his sightless gloom, 
after enriching a certain extent of stuccoed wall with the 
most brilliant and lovely designs. And what true votary 
of art would not purchase unrivalled excellence, even at so 
vast a sacrifice! 

Or, if her friends still solicited a soberer account, Miriam 
replied, that, meeting the old infidel in one of the dismal 
passages of the catacomb, she had entered into controversy 
with him, hoping to achieve the glory and satisfaction of 
converting him to the Christian faith. For the sake of so 
excellent a result, she had even staked her own salvation 
against his, binding herself to accompany him back into his 
penal gloom, if, within a twelve-month’s space, she should 
not have convinced him of the errors through which he had 
so long groped and stumbled. But, alas ! up to the present 
time, the controversy had gone direfully in favor of the 
man-demon; and Miriam (as she whispered in Hilda’s ear) 
had awful forebodings, that, in a few more months, she 
must take an eternal farewell of the sun! 

It was somewhat remarkable that all her romantic fan- 
tasies arrived at this self-same dreary termination; it ap- 
peared impossible for her even to imagine any other than 
a disastrous result from her connection with her ill-omened 
attendant. 

This singularity might have meant nothing, however, had 
34 


THE SPECTRE OF THE CATACOMB 

it not suggested a despondent state of mind, which was 
likewise indicated by many other tokens. Miriam’s friends 
had no difficulty in perceiving that, in one way or another, 
her happiness was very seriously compromised. Her spirits 
were often depressed into deep melancholy. If ever she 
was gay, it was seldom with a healthy cheerfulness. She 
grew moody, moreover, and subject to fits of passionate ill- 
temper; which usually wreaked itself on the heads of those 
who loved her best. Not that Miriam’s indifferent acquaint- 
ances were safe from similar outbreaks of her displeasure, 
especially if they ventured upon any allusion to the model. 
In such cases, they were left with little disposition to renew 
the subject, but inclined, on the other hand, to interpret the 
whole matter as much to her discredit as the least favorable 
coloring of the facts would allow. 

It may occur to the reader, that there was really no de- 
mand for so much rumor and speculation in regard to an 
incident, which might well enough have been explained 
without going many steps beyond the limits of probability. 
The spectre might have been merely a Roman beggar, whose 
fraternity often harbor in stranger shelters than the cata- 
combs; or one of those pilgrims, who still journey from re- 
mote countries to kneel and worship at the holy sites, among 
which these haunts of the early Christians are esteemed 
especially sacred. Or, as was perhaps a more plausible 
theory, he might be a thief of the city, a robber of the 
Campagna, a political offender, or an assassin, with blood 
upon his hand; whom the negligence or connivance of the 
police allowed to take refuge in those subterranean fast- 
nesses, where such outlaws have been accustomed to hide 
themselves from a far antiquity downward. Or he might 
have been a lunatic, fleeing instinctively from man, and mak- 
ing it his dark pleasure to dwell among the tombs, like him 
whose awful cry echoes afar to us from Scripture times. 

33 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

And, as for the stranger’s attaching himself so devotedly 
to Miriam, her personal magnetism might be allowed a 
certain weight in the explanation. For what remains, his 
pertinacity need not seem so very singular to those who 
consider how slight a link serves to connect these vagabonds 
of idle Italy with any person that may have the ill-hap 
to bestow charity, or be otherwise serviceable to them, or 
betray the slightest interest in their fortunes. 

Thus little would remain to be accounted for, except the 
deportment of Miriam herself ; her reserve, her brooding 
melancholy, her petulance, and moody passion. If gener- 
ously interpreted, even these morbid symptoms might have 
sufficient cause in the stimulating and exhaustive influences 
of imaginative art, exercised by a delicate young woman, in 
the nervous and unwholesome atmosphere of Rome. Such, 
at least, was the view of the case which Hilda and Kenyon 
endeavored to impress on their own minds, and impart to 
those whom their opinions might influence. 

One of Miriam’s friends took the matter sadly to heart. 
This was the young Italian. Donatello, as we have seen, 
had been an eye-witness of the stranger’s first appearance, 
and had ever since nourished a singular prejudice against 
the mysterious, dusky, death-scented apparition. It re- 
sembled not so much a human dislike or hatred, as one of 
those instinctive, unreasoning antipathies which the lower 
animals sometimes display, and which generally prove more 
trustworthy than the acutest insight into character. The 
shadow of the model, always flung into the light which 
Miriam diffused around her, caused no slight trouble to 
Donatello. Yet he was of a nature so remarkably genial 
and joyous, so simply happy, that he might well afford to 
have something subtracted from his comfort, and make 
tolerable shift to live upon what remained. 


36 


CHAPTER V 

Miriam's Studio 

The court-yard and staircase of a palace built three hun- 
dred years ago are a peculiar feature of modern Rome^ and 
interest the stranger more than many things of which he 
has heard loftier descriptions. You pass through the grand 
breadth and height of a squalid entrance-way, and perhaps 
see a range of dusky pillars, forming a sort of cloister round 
the court, and in the intervals, from pillar to pillar, are 
strewn fragments of antique statues, headless and legless 
torsos, and busts that have invariably lost — what it might 
be well if living men could lay aside in that unfragrant 
atmosphere — the nose. Bas-reliefs, the spoil of some far 
older palace, are set in the surrounding walls, every stone 
of which has been ravished from the Coliseum, or any other 
imperial ruin which earlier barbarism had not already 
levelled with the earth. Between two of the pillars, more- 
over, stands an old sarcophagus without its lid, and with all 
its more prominently projecting sculptures broken off ; per- 
haps it once held famous dust, and the bony frame-work of 
some historic man, although now only a receptacle for the 
rubbish of the court-yard, and a half-worn broom. 

In the centre of the court, under the blue Italian sky, 
and with the hundred windows of the vast palace gazing 
down upon it, from four sides, appears a fountain. It 
brims over from one stone basin to another, or gushes from 
a Naiad’s urn, or spurts its many little jets from the mouths 
of nameless monsters, which were merely grotesque and 

S7 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


artificial when Bernini, or whoever was their unnatural 
father, first produced them; but now the patches of moss, 
the tufts of grass, the trailing maiden-hair, and all sorts of 
verdant weeds that thrive in the cracks and crevices of moist 
marble, tell us that Nature takes the fountain back into 
her great heart, and cherishes it as kindly as if it were a 
woodland spring. And, hark, the pleasant murmur, the 
gurgle, the plash! You might hear just those tinkling 
sounds from any tiny waterfall in the forest, though here 
they gain a delicious pathos from the stately echoes that 
reverberate their natural language. So the fountain is not 
altogether glad, after all its three centuries at play I 

In one of the angles of the court-yard, a pillared door- 
way gives access to the staircase, with its spacious breadth of 
low, marble steps, up which, in former times, have gone the 
princes and cardinals of the great Roman family who built 
this palace. Or they have come down, with still grander 
and loftier mien, on their way to the Vatican or the Quirinal, 
there to put olF their scarlet hats in exchange for the triple 
crown. But, in fine, all these illustrious personages have 
gone down their hereditary staircase for the last time, leav- 
ing it to be the thoroughfare of ambassadors, English noble- 
men, American millionaires, artists, tradesmen, washer- 
women, and people of every degree; all of whom find such 
gilded and marble-panelled saloons as their pomp and 
luxury demand, or such homely garrets as their necessity 
can pay for, within this one multifarious abode. Only, in 
not a single nook of the palace (built for splendor, and the 
accommodation of a vast retinue, but with no vision of a 
happy fireside or any mode of domestic enjoyment) does the 
humblest or the haughtiest occupant find comfort. 

Up such a staircase, on the morning after the scene at the 
sculpture gallery, sprang the light foot of Donatello. He 
ascended from story to story, passing lofty door-ways, set 

38 


MIRIAM’S STUDIO 


within rich frames of sculptured marble, and climbing un- 
weariedly upward, until the glories of the first piano and 
the elegance of the middle height were exchanged for a sort 
of Alpine region, cold and naked in its aspect. Steps of 
rough stone, rude wooden balustrades, a brick pavement in 
the passages, a dingy whitewash on the walls; these were 
here the palatial features. Finally, he paused before an 
oaken door, on which was pinned a card, bearing the name 
of Miriam Schaefer, artist in oils. Here Donatello knocked, 
and the door immediately fell somewhat ajar; its latch hav- 
ing been pulled up by means of a string on the inside. 
Passing through a little anteroom, he found himself in 
Miriam’s presence. 

“Come in, wild Faun,” she said, “and tell me the latest 
news from Arcady!” 

The artist was not just then at her easel, but was busied 
with the feminine task of mending a pair of gloves. 

There is something extremely pleasant, and even touch- 
ing, — at least, of very sweet, soft, and winning effect, — in 
this peculiarity of needlework, distinguishing women from 
men. Our own sex is incapable of any such by-play aside 
from the main business of life; but women — be they of what 
earthly rank they may, however gifted with intellect or 
genius, or endowed with awful beauty — have always some 
little handiwork ready to fill the tiny gap of every vacant 
moment. A needle is familiar to the fingers of them all. 
A queen, no doubt, plies it on occasion ; the woman poet can 
use it as adroitly as her pen; the woman’s eye, that has 
discovered a new star, turns from its glory to send the 
polished little instrument gleaming along the hem of her 
kerchief, or to darn a casual fray in her dress. And they 
have greatly the advantage of us in this respect. The 
slender thread of silk or cotton keeps them united with the 
small, familiar, gentle interests of life, the continually 

S9 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


operating influences of which do so much for the health of 
the character, and carry off what would otherwise be a dan- 
gerous accumulation of morbid sensibility. A vast deal of 
human sympathy runs along this electric line, stretching 
from the throne to the wicker chair of the humblest seam- 
stress, and keeping high and low in a species of communion 
with their kindred beings. Methinks it is a token of healthy 
and gentle characteristics, when women of high thoughts 
and accomplishments love to sew; especially as they are 
never more at home with their own hearts than while so 
occupied. 

And when the work falls in a woman’s lap, of its own 
accord, and the needle involuntarily ceases to fly, it is a 
sign of trouble, quite as trustworthy as the throb of the 
heart itself. This was what happened to Miriam. Even 
while Donatello stood gazing at her, she seemed to have 
forgotten his presence, allowing him to drop out of her 
thoughts, and the torn glove to fall from her idle fingers. 
Simple as he was, the young man knew by his sympathies 
that something was amiss. 

“Dear lady, you are sad,” said he, drawing close to her. 

“It is nothing, Donatello,” she replied, resuming her 
work; “yes; a little sad, perhaps; but that is not strange for 
us jjeople of the ordinary world, especially for women. 
You are of a cheer fuller race, my friend, and know nothing 
of this disease of sadness. But why do you come into this 
shadowy room of mine?” 

“Why do you make it so shadowy?” asked he. 

“We artists purposely exclude sunshine, and all but a 
partial light,” said Miriam, “because we think it necessary 
to put ourselves at odds with Nature before trying to imitate 
her. That strikes you very strangely, does it not? But 
we make very pretty pictures sometimes with our artfully 
arranged lights and shadows. Amuse yourself with some 

40 


MIRIAM’S STUDIO 

of mine, Donatello, and by and by I shall be in the mood 
to begin the portrait we were talking about.” 

The room had the customary aspect of a painter’s studio ; 
one of those delightful spots that hardly seem to belong 
to the actual world, but rather to be the outward type of 
a poet’s haunted imagination, where there are glimpses, 
sketches, and half-developed hints of beings and objects 
grander and more beautiful than we can anywhere find in 
reality. The windows were closed with shutters, or deeply 
curtained, except one, which was partly open to a sunless 
portion of the sky, admitting only from high upward that 
partial light which, with its strongly marked contrast of 
shadow, is the first requisite towards seeing objects pictori- 
ally. Pencil-drawings were pinned against the wall or 
scattered on the tables. Unframed canvases turned their 
backs on the spectator, presenting only a blank to the eye, 
and churlishly concealing whatever riches of scenery or 
human beauty Miriam’s skill had depicted on the other side. 

In the obscurest part of the room Donatello was half 
startled at perceiving duskily a woman with long dark hair, 
who threw up her arms with a wild gesture of tragic 
despair, and appeared to beckon him into the darkness along 
with her. 

“Do not be afraid, Donatello,” said Miriam, smiling to 
see him peering doubtfully into the mysterious dusk. “She 
means you no mischief, nor could perpetrate any if she 
wished it ever so much. It is a lady of exceedingly pliable 
disposition; now a heroine of romance, and now a rustic 
maid; yet all for show; being created, indeed, on purpose 
to wear rich shawls and other garments in a becoming 
fashion. This is the true end of her being, although she 
pretends to assume the most varied duties and perform 
many parts in life, while really the poor puppet has nothing 
on earth to do. Upon my word, I am satirical unawares, 

41 


\ 

\ 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

and seem to be describing nine women out of ten in the 
person of my lay-figure. For most purposes she has the 
advantage of the sisterhood. Would I were like her!” 

“How it changes her aspect^” exclaimed Donatello, “to 
know that she is but a jointed figure! When my eyes first 
fell upon her, I thought her arms moved, as if beckoning me 
to help her in some direful peril.” 

“Are you often troubled with such sinister freaks of 
fancy?” asked IVIiriam. “I should not have supposed it.” 

“To tell you the truth, dearest signorina,” answered the 
young Italian, “I am apt to be fearful in old, gloomy houses, 
and in the dark. I love no dark or dusky corners, except 
it be in a grotto, or among the thick green leaves of an 
arbor, or in some nook of the woods, such as I know many 
in the neighborhood of my home. Even there, if a stray 
sunbeam steal in, the shadow is all the better for its cheerful 
glimmer.” 

“Yes; you are a Faun, you know,” said the fair artist, 
laughing at the remembrance of the scene of the day be- 
fore. “But the world is sadly changed nowadays; griev- 
ously changed, poor Donatello, since those happy times 
when your race used to dwell in the Arcadian woods, play- 
ing hide-and-seek with the nymphs in grottos and nooks 
of shrubbery. You have reappeared on earth some centu- 
ries too late,” 

“I do not understand you now,” answered Donatello, 
looking perplexed; “only, signorina, I am glad to have my 
lifetime while you live; and where you are, be it in cities 
or fields, I would fain be there too.” 

“I wonder whether I ought to allow you to speak in this 
way,” said Miriam, looking thoughtfully at him. “Many 
young women would think it behoved them to be offended. 
Hilda would never let you speak so, I dare say. But he is 
a mere boy,” she added, aside, “a simple boy, putting his 

42 


MIRIAM’S STUDIO 


boyish heart to the proof on the first woman whom he 
chances to meet. If yonder lay-figure had had the luck to 
meet him first, she would have smitten him as deeply as I.” 

“Are you angry with me?” asked Donatello, dolorously. 

“Not in the least,” answered Miriam, frankly giving him 
her hand. “Pray look over some of these sketches till I 
have leisure to chat with you a little. I hardly think I am 
in spirits enough to begin your portrait to-day.” 

Donatello was as gentle and docile as a pet spaniel; as 
playful, too, in his general disposition, or saddening with 
his mistress’s variable mood like that or any other kindly 
animal which has the faculty of bestowing its sympathies 
more completely than men or women can ever do. Accord- 
ingly, as Miriam bade him, he tried to turn his attention to 
a great pile and confusion of pen-and-ink sketches and 
pencil-drawings which lay tossed together on a table. As 
it chanced, however, they gave the poor youth little delight. 

The first that he took up was a very impressive sketch, in 
which the artist had jotted down her rough ideas for a pic- 
ture of Jael driving the nail through the temples of Sisera. 
It was dashed off with remarkable power, and showed a 
touch or two that were actually life-like and death-like, as if 
Miriam had been standing by when Jael gave the first stroke 
of her murderous hammer, or as if she herself were Jael, 
and felt irresistibly impelled to make her bloody confes- 
sion in this guise. 

Her first conception of the stern Jewess had evidently 
been that of perfect womanhood, a lovely form, and a high, 
heroic face of lofty beauty; but, dissatisfied either with her 
own w'ork or the terrible story itself, Miriam had added a 
certain wayward quirk of her pencil, which at once con- 
verted the heroine into a vulgar murderess. It was evident 
that a Jael like this would be sure to search Sisera’s pockets 
as soon as the breath was out of his body. 

43 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


In another sketch she had attempted the story of Judith, 
which we see represented by the old masters so often, and 
in such various styles. Here, too, beginning with a pas- 
sionate and fiery conception of the subject in all earnest- 
ness, she had given the last touches in utter scorn, as it 
were, of the feelings which at first took such powerful pos- 
session of her hand. The head of Holof ernes (which by 
the by had a pair of twisted mustaches, like those of a cer- 
tain potentate of the day) being fairly cut olF, was screw- 
ing its eyes upward and twirling its features into a diaboli- 
cal grin of triumphant malice, which it flung right in 
Judith’s face. On her part, she had the startled aspect 
that might be conceived of a cook if a calf’s head should 
sneer at her when about to be popped into the dinner-pot. 

Over and over again, there was the idea of woman, act- 
ing the part of a revengeful mischief towards man. It 
was, indeed, very singular to see how the artist’s imagina- 
tion seemed to run on these stories of bloodshed, in which 
woman’s hand was crimsoned by the stain; and how, too, — 
in one form or another, grotesque or sternly sad, — she 
failed not to bring out the moral, that woman must strike 
through her own heart to reach a human life, whatever 
were the motive that impelled her. 

One of the sketches represented the daughter of Herod- 
ias receiving the head of John the Baptist in a charger. 
The general conception appeared to be taken from Ber- 
nardo Luini’s picture, in the Uffizzi Gallery at Florence; 
but Miriam had imparted to the saint’s face a look of gen- 
tle and heavenly reproach, with sad and blessed eyes fixed 
upward at the maiden; by the force of which miraculous 
glance, her whole womanhood was at once awakened to love 
and endless remorse. 

These sketches had a most disagreeable effect on Dona- 
tello’s peculiar temperament. He gave a shudder; his face 

44 


MIRIAM’S STUDIO 


assumed a look of trouble, fear, and disgust; he snatched 
up one sketch after another, as if about to tear it in pieces. 
Finally, shoving away the pile of drawings, he shrank back 
from the table and clasped his hands over his eyes. 

“What is the matter, Donatello?” asked Miriam, looking 
up from a letter which she was now writing. “Ah! I did 
not mean you to see those drawings. They are ugly phan- 
toms that stole out of my mind; not things that I created, 
but things that haunt me. See! here are some trifles that 
perhaps will please you better.” 

She gave him a portfolio, the sketches in which indicated 
a happier mood of mind, and one, it is to be hoped, more 
truly characteristic of the artist. Supposing neither of 
these classes of subject to show anything of her own indi- 
viduality, Miriam had evidently a great scope of fancy, and 
a singular faculty of putting what looked like heart into 
her productions. The latter sketches were domestic and 
common scenes, so finely and subtilely idealized that they 
seemed such as we may see at any moment, and every- 
where ; while still there was the indefinable something 
added, or taken away, which makes all the difference be- 
tween sordid life and an earthly paradise. The feeling 
and sympathy in all of them were deep and true. There 
was the scene, that comes once in every life, of the lover 
winning the soft and pure avowal of bashful affection from 
the maiden whose slender form half leans towards his arm, 
half shrinks from it, we know not which. There was 
wedded affection in its successive stages, represented in a 
series of delicately conceived designs, touched with a holy 
fire, that burned from youth to age in those two hearts, and 
gave one identical beauty to the faces throughout all the 
changes of feature. 

There was a drawing of an infant’s shoe, half worn out, 
with the airy print of the blessed foot within; a thing that 

45 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

would make a mother smile or weep out of the very depths 
of her heart; and yet an actual mother would not have been 
likely to appreciate the poetry of the little shoe^ until 
Miriam revealed it to her. It was wonderful, the depth 
and force with which the above, and other kindred sub- 
jects, were depicted, and the profound significance which 
they often acquired. The artist, still in her fresh youth, 
could not probably have drawn any of these dear and rich 
experiences from her own life; unless, perchance, that first 
sketch of all, the avowal of maiden affection, were a re- 
membered incident, and not a prophecy. But it is more 
delightful to believe that, from first to last, they were the 
productions of a beautiful imagination, dealing with the 
warm and pure suggestions of a woman’s heart, and thus 
idealizing a truer and lovelier picture of the life that be- 
longs to woman, than an actual acquaintance with some of 
its hard and dusty facts could have inspired. So considered, 
the sketches intimated such a force and variety of imagina- 
tive sympathies as would enable Miriam to fill her life 
richly with the bliss and suffering of womanhood, however 
barren it might individually be. 

There was one observable point, indeed, betokening that 
the artist relinquished, for her personal self, the happiness 
which she could so profoundly appreciate for others. In 
all those sketches of common life, and the affections that 
spiritualize it, a figure was portrayed apart; now it peeped 
between the branches of a shrubbery, amid which two lovers 
sat; now it was looking through a frosted window, from 
the outside, while a young wedded pair sat at their new 
fireside within; and once it leaned from a chariot, which 
six horses were whirling onward in pomp and pride, and 
gazed at a scene of humble enjoyment by a cottage-door. 
Always it was the same figure, and always depicted with an 
expression of deep sadness; and in every instance, slightly 

46 


MIRIAM’S STUDIO 


as they were brought out, the face and form had the traits 
of Miriam’s own. 

“Do you like these sketches better, Donatello.^” asked 
Miriam. 

“Yes,” said Donatello, rather doubtfully. 

“Not much, I fear,” responded she, laughing. “And 
what should a boy like you — a Faun, too — know about the 
joys and sorrows, the intertwining light and shadow, of 
human life.^ I forgot that you were a Faun. You can- 
not suffer deeply; therefore you can but half enjoy. Here, 
now, is a subject which you can better appreciate.” 

The sketch represented merely a rustic dance, but with 
such extravagance of fun as was delightful to behold; and 
here there was no drawback, except that strange sigh and 
sadness which always come when we are merriest. 

“I am going to paint the picture in oils,” said the artist; 
“and I want you, Donatello, for the wildest dancer of them 
all. Will you sit for me, some day? — or, rather, dance for 
me ?” 

“Oh, most gladly, signorina!” exclaimed Donatello. 
“See; it shall be like this.” 

And forthwith he began to dance, and flit about the 
studio, like an incarnate sprite of jollity, pausing at last 
on the extremity of one toe, as if that were the only portion 
of himself whereby his frisky nature could come in contact 
with the earth. The effect in that shadowy chamber, 
whence the artist had so carefully excluded the sunshine, 
was as enlivening as if one bright ray had contrived to 
shimmer in and frolic around the walls, and finally rest just 
in the centre of the floor. 

“That was admirable!” said Miriam, with an approving 
smile. “If I can catch you on my canvas, it will be a glo- 
rious picture; only I am afraid you will dance out of it, by 
the very truth of the representation, just when I shall have 

47 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

given it the last touch. We will try it one of these days. 
And now, to reward you for that jolly exhibition, you shall 
see what has been shown to no one else.” 

She went to her easel, on which was placed a picture 
with its back turned towards the spectator. Reversing the 
position, there appeared the portrait of a beautiful woman, 
such as one sees only two or three, if even so many times, 
in all a lifetime; so beautiful, that she seemed to get into 
your consciousness and memory, and could never afterwards 
be shut out, but haunted your dreams, for pleasure or for 
pain; holding your inner realm as a conquered territory, 
though without deigning to make herself at home there. 

She was very youthful, and had what was usually 
thought to be a Jewish aspect; a complexion in which there 
was no roseate bloom, yet neither was it pale; dark eyes, 
into which you might look as deeply as your glance would 
go, and still be conscious of a depth that you had not 
sounded, though it lay open to the day. She had black, 
abundant hair, with none of the vulgar glossiness of other 
women’s sable locks; if she were really of Jewish blood, 
then this was Jewish hair, and a dark glory such as crowns 
no Christian maiden’s head. Gazing at this portrait, you 
saw what Rachel might have been, when Jacob deemed her 
worth the wooing seven years, and seven more; or per- 
chance she might ripen to be what Judith was, when she 
vanquished Holof ernes with her beauty, and slew him for 
too much adoring it. 

Miriam watched Donatello’s contemplation of the pic- 
ture, and seeing his simple rapture, a smile of pleasure 
brightened on her face, mixed with a little scorn; at least, 
her lips curled, and her eyes gleamed, as if she disdained 
either his admiration or her own enjoyment of it. 

“Then you like the picture, Donatello?” she asked. 

48 


MIRIAM’S STUDIO 


*‘Oh, beyond what I can tell!’" he answered. “So beau- 
tiful! — so beautiful!” 

“And do you recognize the likeness ?” 

“Signorina,” exclaimed Donatello, turning from the pic- 
ture to the artist, in astonishment that she should ask the 
question, “the resemblance is as little to be mistaken as if 
you had bent over the smooth surface of a fountain, and 
possessed the witchcraft to call forth the image that you 
made there! It is yourself!” 

Donatello said the truth; and we forbore to speak de- 
scriptively of Miriam’s beauty earlier in our narrative, be- 
cause we foresaw this occasion to bring it perhaps more 
forcibly before the reader. 

We know not whether the portrait were a flattered like- 
ness; probably not, regarding it merely as the delineation 
of a lovely face; although Miriam, like all self-painters, 
may have endowed herself with certain graces which other 
eyes might not discern. Artists are fond of painting 
their own portraits; and, in Florence, there is a gallery of 
hundreds of them, including the most illustrious, in all of 
which there are autobiographical characteristics, so to 
speak; traits, expressions, loftinesses, and amenities, which 
would have been invisible, had they not been painted from 
within. Yet their reality and truth are none the less. 
Miriam, in like manner, had doubtless conveyed some of 
the intimate results of her heart-knowledge into her own 
portrait, and perhaps wished to try whether they would be 
perceptible to so simple and natural an observer as Dona- 
tello. 

“Does the expression please you.^” she asked. 

“Yes,” said Donatello, hesitatingly; “if it would only 
smile so like the sunshine as you sometimes do. No, it is 
sadder than I thought at first. Cannot you make yourself 
smile a little, signorina?” 


49 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


“A forced smile is uglier than a frown,” said Miriam, 
a bright, natural smile breaking out over her face even as 
she spoke. 

“Oh, catch it now!” cried Donatello, clapping his hands. 
“Let it shine upon the picture! There! it has vanished 
already! And you are sad again, very sad; and the pic- 
ture gazes sadly forth at me, as if some evil had befallen it 
in the little time since I looked last.” 

“How perplexed you seem, my friend!” answered 
Miriam. “I really half believe you are a Faun, there is 
such a mystery and terror for you in these dark moods, 
which are just as natural as daylight to us people of or- 
dinary mould. I advise you, at all events, to look at other 
faces with those innocent and happy eyes, and never more 
to gaze at mine!” 

“You speak in vain,” replied the young man, with a 
deeper emphasis than she had ever before heard in his 
voice; “shroud yourself in what gloom you will, I must 
needs follow you.” 

“Well, well, well,” said Miriam, impatiently; “but leave 
me now; for to speak plainly, my good friend, you grow a 
little wearisome. I walk this afternoon in the Borghese 
grounds. Meet me there, if it suits your pleasure.” 


50 


CHAPTER VI 
The Virgin's Shrine 

After Donatello had left the studio^ Miriam herself came 
forth, and taking her way through some of the intricacies 
of the city, entered what might be called either a widening 
of a street, or a small piazza. The neighborhood com- 
prised a baker’s oven, emitting the usual fragrance of sour 
bread; a shoe-shop; a linen-draper’s shop; a pipe and cigar 
shop; a lottery office; a station for French soldiers, with a 
sentinel pacing in front; and a fruit-stand, at which a Ro- 
man matron was selling the dried kernels of chestnuts, 
wretched little figs, and some bouquets of yesterday. A 
church, of course, was near at hand, the fa9ade of which 
ascended into lofty pinnacles, whereon were perched two 
or three winged figures of stone, either angelic or allegori- 
cal, blowing stone trumpets in close vicinity to the upper 
windows of an old and shabby palace. This palace was 
distinguished by a feature not very common in the architec- 
ture of Roman edifices; that is to say, a mediaeval tower, 
square, massive, lofty, and battlemented and machicolated 
at the summit. 

At one of the angles of the battlements stood a shrine of 
the Virgin, such as we see everywhere at the street-corners 
of Rome, but seldom or never, except in this solitary in- 
stance, at a height above the ordinary level of men’s views 
and aspirations. Connected with this old tower and its 
lofty shrine, there is a legend which we cannot here pause 
to tell; but for centuries a lamp has been burning before 

51 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

the Virgin’s image, at noon, at midnight, and at all hours 
of the twenty-four, and must be kept burning forever, as 
long as the tower shall stand; or else the tower itself, the 
palace, and whatever estate belongs to it, shall pass from 
its hereditary possessor, in accordance with an ancient vow, 
and become the property of the Church. 

As Miriam approached, she looked upward, and saw, — 
not, indeed, the flame of the never-dying lamp, which was 
swallowed up in the broad sunlight that brightened the 
shrine, but a flock of white doves, skimming, fluttering, and 
wheeling about the topmost height of the tower, their silver 
wings flashing in the pure transparency of the air. Sev- 
eral of them sat on the ledge of the upper window, push- 
ing one another ofi* by their eager struggle for this favorite 
station, and all tapping their beaks and flapping their wings 
tumultuously against the panes; some had alighted in the 
street, far below, but flew hastily upward, at the sound of 
the window being thrust ajar, and opening in the middle, 
on rusty hinges, as Roman windows do. 

A fair young girl, dressed in white, showed herself at the 
aperture for a single instant, and threw forth as much as her 
two small hands could hold of some kind of food, for the 
flock of eleemosynary doves. It seemed greatly to the 
taste of the feathered people; for they tried to snatch beak- 
fuls of it from her grasp, caught it in the air, and rushed 
downward after it upon the pavement. 

“What a pretty scene this is,” thought Miriam, with a 
kindly smile, “and how like a dove she is herself, the fair, 
pure creature! The other doves know her for a sister, I 
am sure.” 

Miriam passed beneath the deep portal of the palace, 
and turning to the left, began to mount flight after flight of 
a staircase, which, for the loftiness of its aspiration, was 
worthy to be Jacob’s ladder, or, at all events, the 

52 


j THE VIRGIN’S SHRINE 

1 staircase of the Tower of Babel. The city bustle, which is 
i heard even in Rome, the rumble of wheels over the uncom- 
fortable paving-stones, the hard harsh cries re-echoing in the 
I high and narrow street, grew faint and died away; as the 
turmoil of the world will always die, if we set our faces to 
climb heavenward. Higher, and higher still; and now, 
glancing through the successive windows that threw in their 
narrow light upon the stairs, her view stretched across the 
roofs of the city, unimpeded even by the stateliest palaces. 
Only the domes of churches ascend into this airy region, 
and hold up their golden crosses on a level with her eye; 
except, that, out of the very heart of Rome, the column of 
Antoninus thrusts itself upward, with St. Paul upon its 
summit, the sole human form that seems to have kept her 
company. 

Finally, the staircase came to an end; save that, on one 
side of the little entry where it terminated, a flight of a 
dozen steps gave access to the roof of the tower and the 
legendary shrine. On the other side was a door, at which 
Miriam knocked, but rather as a friendly announcement 
of her presence than with any doubt of hospitable welcome ; 
for, awaiting no response, she lifted the latch and entered. 

“What a hermitage you have found for yourself, dear 
Hilda!’" she exclaimed. “You breathe sweet air, above all 
the evil scents of Rome ; and even so, in your maiden eleva- 
tion, you dwell above our vanities and passions, our moral 
dust and mud, with the doves and the angels for your near- 
est neighbors. I should not wonder if the Catholics were 
to make a saint of you, like your namesake of old; espe- 
cially as you have almost avowed yourself of their religion, 
by undertaking to keep the lamp alight before the Virgin’s 
shrine.” 

“No, no, Miriam!” said Hilda, who had come joyfully 
forward to greet her friend. “You must not call me a 

53 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


Catholic. A Christian girl — even a daughter of the Puri- 
tans — may surely pay honor to the idea of divine Woman- 
hood_, vrithout giving up the faith of her forefathers. But 
how kind you are to climb into my dove-cote !” 

“It is no trifling proof of friendship^ indeed^’* answered 
Miriam; “I should think there were three hundred stairs 
at least.” 

“But it will do you good,” continued Hilda. “A height 
of some fifty feet above the roofs of Rome gives me all the 
advantages that I could get from fifty miles of distance. 
The air so exhilarates my spirits, that sometimes I feel half 
inclined to attempt a flight from the top of my tower, in the 
faith that I should float upward.” 

“Oh, pray don’t try it!” said Miriam, laughing. “If it 
should turn out that you are less than an angel, you would 
find the stones of the Roman pavement very hard ; and if an 
angel, indeed, I am afraid you would never come down 
among us again.” 

This young American girl was an example of the freedom 
of life which it is possible for a female artist to enjoy at 
Rome. She dwelt in her tower, as free to descend into the 
corrupted atmosphere of the city beneath, as one of her 
companion doves to fly downward into the street ; — all alone, 
perfectly independent, under her own sole guardianship, 
unless watched over by the Virgin, whose shrine she tended; 
doing what she lilted without a suspicion or a shadow upon 
the snowy whiteness of her fame. The customs of artist 
life bestow such liberty upon the sex, which is elsewhere 
restricted within so much narrower limits ; and it is perhaps 
an indication that, whenever we admit women to a wider 
scope of pursuits and professions, we must also remove the 
shackles of our present conventional rules, which would 
then become an insuff’erable restraint on either maid or 
wife. The system seems to work unexceptionally in 

54 


THE VIRGIN’S SHRINE 


Rome; and in many other cases, as in Hilda’s, purity of 
heart and life are allowed to assert themselves, and to be 
their own proof and security, to a degree unknown in the 
society of other cities. 

Hilda, in her native land, had early shown what was pro- 
nounced by connoisseurs a decided genius for the pictorial 
art. Even in her school-days — still not so very distant — 
she had produced sketches that were seized upon by men of 
taste, and hoarded as among the choicest treasures of their 
portfolios; scenes delicately imagined, lacking, perhaps, 
the reality which comes only from a close acquaintance with 
life, but so softly touched with feeling and fancy, that you 
seemed to be looking at humanity with angels’ eyes. With 
years and experience she might be expected to attain a 
darker and more forcible touch, which would impart to her 
designs the relief they needed. Had Hilda remained in her 
own country, it is not improbable that she might have pro- 
duced original works worthy to hang in that gallery of 
native art which, we hope, is destined to extend its rich 
length through many future centuries. An orphan, however, 
without near relatives, and possessed of a little property, 
she had found it within her possibilities to come to Italy; 
that central clime, whither the eyes and the heart of every 
artist turn, as if pictures could not be made to glow in any 
other atmosphere, as if statues could not assume grace and 
expression, save in that land of whitest marble. 

Hilda’s gentle courage had brought her safely over land 
and sea; her mild, unflagging perseverance had made a place 
for her in the famous city, even like a flower that finds a 
chink for itself, and a little earth to grow in, on whatever 
ancient wall its slender roots may fasten. Here she dwelt, 
in her tower, possessing a friend or two in Rome, but no 
home companion except the flock of doves, whose cote was 
in a ruinous chamber contiguous to her own. They soon be- 

55 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


came as familiar with the fair-haired Saxon girl as if she 
were a born sister of their brood; and her customary white 
robe bore such an analogy to their snowy plumage that the 
confraternity of artists called Hilda the Dove_, and recog- 
nized her aerial apartment as the Dove-cote. And while 
the other doves flew far and wide in quest of what was good 
for them^ Hilda likewise spread her wings, and sought such 
ethereal and imaginative sustenance as God ordains for crea- 
tures of her kind. 

We know not whether the result of her Italian studies, 
so far as it could jct be seen, will be accepted as a good or 
desirable one. Certain it is, that since her arrival in the 
pictorial land, Hilda seemed to have entirely lost the im- 
pulse of original design, which brought her thither. No 
doubt the girl’s early dreams had been of sending forms and 
hues of beauty into the visible world out of her own mind; 
of compelling scenes of poetry and history to live before 
men’s eyes, through conceptions and by methods individual 
to herself. But more and more, as she grew familiar with 
the miracles of art that enrich so many galleries in Rome, 
Hilda had ceased to consider herself as an original artist. 
No wonder that this change should have befallen her. She 
was endowed with a deep and sensitive faculty of apprecia- 
tion; she had the gift of discerning and worshipping excel- 
lence in a most unusual measure. No other person, it is 
probable, recognized so adequately, and enjoyed with such 
deep delight, the pictorial wonders that were here displayed. 
She saw — no, not saw, but felt — through and through a pic- 
ture; she bestowed upon it all the warmth and richness of a 
woman’s sympathy; not by any intellectual effort, but by 
this strength of heart, and this guiding light of sympathy, 
she went straight to the central point, in which the master 
had conceived his work. Thus, she viewed it, as it were, 

56 


THE VIRGIN’S SHRINE 


with his own eyes_, and hence her comprehension of any pic- 
ture that interested her was perfect. 

This power and depth of appreciation depended partly 
upon Hilda’s physical organization^ which was at once 
healthful and exquisitely delicate; and, connected with this 
advantage, she had a command of hand, a nicety and force 
of touch, which is an endowment separate from pictorial 
genius, though indispensable to its exercise. 

It has probably happened in many other instances, as it 
did in Hilda’s case, that she ceased to aim at original 
achievement in consequence of the very gifts which so ex- 
quisitely fitted her to profit by familiarity with the works 
of the mighty old masters. Reverencing these wonderful 
men so deeply, she was too grateful for all they bestowed 
upon her, too loyal, too humble, in their awful presence, to 
think of enrolling herself in their society. Beholding the 
miracles of beauty which they had achieved, the world 
seemed already rich enough in original designs, and nothing 
more was so desirable as to diffuse those self-same beauties 
more widely among mankind. All the youthful hopes and 
ambitions, the fanciful ideas which she had brought from 
home, of great pictures to be conceived in her feminine 
mind, were flung aside, and, so far as those most intimate 
with her could discern, relinquished without a sigh. All that 
she would henceforth attempt — and that most reverently, 
not to say religiously — was to catch and reflect some of the 
glory which had been shed upon canvas from the immortal 
pencils of old. 

So Hilda became a copyist: in the Pinacotheca of the 
Vatican, in the galleries of the Pamfili-Doria palace, the 
Borghese, the Corsini, the Sciarra, her easel was set up 
before many a famous picture by Guido, Domenichino, 
Raphael, and the devout painters of earlier schools than 
these. Other artists and visitors from foreign lands beheld 

57 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


the slender, girlish figure in front of some world-known 
work, absorbed, unconscious of everything around her, seem- 
ing to live only in what she sought to do. They smiled, no 
doubt, at the audacity which led her to dream of copying 
those mighty achievements. But, if they paused to look over 
her shoulder, and had sensibility enough to understand what 
was before their eyes, they soon felt inclined to believe that 
the spirits of the old masters were hovering over Hilda, and 
guiding her delicate white hand. In truth, from whatever 
realm of bliss and many-colored beauty those spirits might 
descend, it would have been no unworthy errand to help so 
gentle and pure a worshipper of their genius in giving the 
last divine touch to her repetitions of their works. 

Her copies were indeed marvellous. Accuracy was not 
the phrase for them; a Chinese copy is accurate. Hilda’s 
had that evanescent and ethereal life — ^that flitting fra- 
grance, as it were, of the originals — which it is as difficult to 
catch and retain as it would be for a sculptor to get the very 
movement and varying color of a living man into his marble 
bust. Only by watching the efforts of the most skilful copy- 
ists — men who spend a lifetime, as some of them do, in mul- 
tiplying copies of a single picture — and observing how in- 
variably they leave out just the indefinable charm that in- 
volves the last, inestimable value, can we understand the 
difficulties of the task which they undertake. 

It was not Hilda’s general practice to attempt reproduc- 
ing the whole of a great picture, but to select some high, 
noble, and delicate portion of it, in which the spirit and es- 
sence of the picture culminated: the Virgin’s celestial sor- 
row, for example, or a hovering angel, imbued with immortal 
light, or a saint with the glow of heaven in his dying face, — 
and these would be rendered with her whole soul. If a pic- 
ture had darkened into an indistinct shadow through time 
and neglect, or had been injured by cleaning, or retouched 

58 


THE VIRGIN’S SHRINE 

by some profane hand, she seemed to possess the faculty of 
seeing it in its pristine glory. The copy would come from 
her hands with what the beholder felt must be the light 
which the old master had left upon the original in bestowing 
his final and most ethereal touch. In some instances even 
(at least, so those believed who best appreciated Hilda’s 
power and sensibility) she had been enabled to execute what 
the great master had conceived in his imagination, but had 
not so perfectly succeeded in putting upon canvas; a result 
surely not impossible when such depth of sympathy as she 
possessed was assisted by the delicate skill and accuracy of 
her slender hand. In such cases the girl was but a finer 
instrument, a more exquisitely effective piece of mechanism, 
by the help of which the spirit of some great departed 
painter now first achieved his ideal, centuries after his own 
earthly hand, that other tool, had turned to dust. 

Not to describe her as too much a wonder, however, Hilda, 
or the Dove, as her well-wishers half laughingly delighted 
to call her, had been pronounced by good j udges incompara- 
bly the best copyist in Rome. After minute examination of 
her works, the most skilful artists declared that she had been 
led to her results by following precisely the same process 
step by step through which the original painter had trodden 
to the development of his idea. Other copyists — if such 
they are worthy to be called — attempt only a superficial imi- 
tation. Copies of the old masters in this sense are produced 
by thousands; there are artists, as we have said, who spend 
their lives in painting the works, or perhaps one single 
work, of one illustrious painter over and over again: thus 
they convert themselves into Guido machines, or Raphaelic 
machines. Their performances, it is true, are often won- 
derfully deceptive to a careless eye; but working entirely 
from the outside, and seeking only to reproduce the surface, 
these men are sure to leave out that indefinable nothing, that 

59 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

inestimable something, that constitutes the life and soul 
through which the picture gets its immortality. Hilda was 
no such machine as this ; she wrought religiously, and there- 
fore wrought a miracle. 

It strikes us that there is something far higher and nobler 
in all this, in her thus sacrificing herself to the devout recog- 
nition of the highest excellence in art, than there would 
have been in cultivating her not inconsiderable share of 
talent for the production of works from her own ideas. 
She might have set up for herself, and won no ignoble 
name; she might have helped to fill the already crowded and 
cumbered world with pictures, not destitute of merit, but 
falling short, if by ever so little, of the best that has been 
done; she might thus have gratified some tastes that were 
incapable of appreciating Raphael. But this could be done 
only by lowering the standard of art to the comprehension 
of the spectator. She chose the better and loftier and 
more unselfish part, laying her individual hopes, her fame, 
her prospects of enduring remembrance, at the feet of those 
great departed ones, whom she so loved and venerated; and 
therefore the world was the richer for this feeble girl. 

Since the beauty and glory of a great picture are con- 
fined within itself, she won out that glory by patient faith 
and self-devotion, and multiplied it for mankind. From 
the dark, chill corner of a gallery, — from some curtained 
chapel in a church, where the light came seldom and aslant, 
— from the prince’s carefully guarded cabinet, where not 
one eye in thousands was permitted to behold it, — she 
brought the wondrous picture into daylight, and gave all its 
magic splendor for the enjoyment of the world. Hilda’s 
faculty of genuine admiration is one of the rarest to be 
found in human nature; and let us try to recompense her in 
kind by admiring her generous self-surrender, and her 
brave, humble magnanimity in choosing to be the handmaid 

60 


THE VIRGIN’S SHRINE 


of those old magicians, instead of a minor enchantress 
within a circle of her own. 

The handmaid of Raphael, whom she loved with a virgin’s 
love! Would it have been worth Hilda’s while to relin- 
quish this office for the sake of giving the world a picture 
or two which it would call original; pretty fancies of snow 
and moonlight; the counterpart in picture of so many fem- 
inine achievements in literature! 


61 


CHAPTER VII 
Beatrice 

Miriam was glad to find the Dove in her turret-home; 
for being endowed with an infinite activity, and taking 
exquisite delight in the sweet labor of which her life was 
full, it was Hilda’s practice to flee abroad betimes, and haunt 
the galleries till dusk. Happy were those (but they were 
very few) whom she ever chose to be the companions of her 
day; they saw the art-treasures of Rome, under her guid- 
ance, as they had never seen them before. Not that Hilda 
could dissertate, or talk learnedly about pictures ; she would 
probably have been puzzled by the technical terms of her 
own art. Not that she had much to say about what she most 
profoundly admired; but even her silent sympathy was so 
powerful that it drew your own along with it, endowing 
you with a second-sight that enabled you to see excellences 
with almost the depth and delicacy of her own perceptions. 

All the Anglo-Saxon denizens of Rome, by this time, 
knew Hilda by sight. Unconsciously, the poor child had 
become one of the spectacles of the Eternal City, and was 
often pointed out to strangers, sitting at her easel among 
the wild-bearded young men, the white-haired old ones, and 
the shabbily dressed, painfully plain women, who make 
up the throng of copyists. The’ old custodes knew her 
well, and watched over her as their own child. Sometimes 
a young artist, instead of going on with a copy of the pic- 
ture before which he had placed his easel, would enrich his 
canvas with an original portrait of Hilda at her work. A 

62 


BEATRICE 


lovelier subject could not have been selected, nor one which 
required nicer skill and insight in doing it anything like 
justice. She was pretty at all times, in our native New 
England style, with her light-brown ringlets, her delicately 
tinged, but healthful cheek, her sensitive, intelligent, yet 
most feminine and kindly face. But, every few moments, 
this pretty and girlish face grew beautiful and striking, 
as some inward thought and feeling brightened, rose to the 
surface, and then, as it were, passed out of sight again; so 
that, taking into view this constantly recurring change, it 
really seemed as if Hilda were only visible by the sunshine 
of her soul. 

In other respects, she was a good subject for a portrait, 
being distinguished by a gentle picturesqueness, which was 
perhaps unconsciously bestowed by some minute peculiarity 
of dress, such as artists seldom fail to assume. The eifect 
was to make her appear like an inhabitant of picture-land, 
a partly ideal creature, not to be handled, nor even ap- 
proached too closely. In her feminine self, Hilda was 
natural, and of pleasant deportment, endowed with a mild 
cheerfulness of temper, not overflowing with animal' spirits, 
' .. never long despondent. There was a certain simplicity 
that made every one her friend, but it was combined with a 
subtile attribute of reserve, that insensibly kept those at a 
distance who were not suited to her sphere. 

Miriam was the dearest friend whom she had ever known. 
Being a year or two the elder, of longer acquaintance with 
Italy, and better fitted to deal with its crafty and selfish 
inhabitants, she had helped Hilda to arrange her way of 
life, and had encouraged her through those first weeks, 
when Rome is so dreary to every new-comer. 

“But how lucky that you are at home to-day,’’ said 
Miriam, continuing the conversation which was begun, many 
pages back. “I hardly hoped to find you, though I had a 

63 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


favor to ask, — a commission to put into your charge. But 
what picture is this?” 

“See!” said Hilda, taking her friend’s hand, and leading 
her in front of the easel. “I wanted your opinion of it.” 

“If you have really succeeded,” observed Miriam, recog- 
nizing the picture at the first glance, “it will be the greatest 
miracle you have yet achieved.” 

The picture represented simply a female head; a very 
youthful, girlish, perfectly beautiful face, enveloped in 
white drapery, from beneath which strayed a lock or two 
of what seemed a rich, though hidden luxuriance of auburn 
hair. The eyes were large and brown, and met those of the 
spectator, but evidently with a strange, ineffectual effort to 
escape. There was a little redness about the eyes, very 
slightly indicated, so that you would question whether or 
no the girl had been weeping. The whole face was quiet; 
there was no distortion or disturbance of any single 
feature; nor was it easy to see why the expression was not 
cheerful, or why a single touch of the artist’s pencil should 
not brighten it into joyousness. But, in fact, it was the 
very saddest picture ever painted or conceived; it involved 
an unfathomable depth of sorrow, the sense of which came 
to the observer by a sort of intuition. It was a sorrow that 
removed this beautiful girl out of the sphere of humanity, 
and set her in a far-off region, the remoteness of which — 
while yet her face is so close before us — makes us shiver 
as at a spectre. 

“Yes, Hilda,” said her friend, after closely examining 
the picture, “you have done nothing else so wonderful as 
this. But by what unheard-of solicitations or secret in- 
terest have you obtained leave to copy Guido’s Beatrice 
Cenci? It is an unexampled favor; and the impossibility 
of getting a genuine copy has filled the Roman picture- 

64 


BEATRICE 


shops with Beatrices, gay, grievous, or coquettish, but never 
a true one among them.” 

“There has been one exquisite copy, I have heard,” said 
Hilda, “by an artist capable of appreciating the spirit of 
the picture. It was Thompson, who brought it away piece- 
meal, being forbidden (like the rest of us) to set up his 
easel before it. As for me, I knew the Prince Barberini 
would be deaf to all entreaties ; so I had no resource but to 
sit down before the picture, day after day, and let it sink 
into my heart. I do believe it is now photographed there. 
It is a sad face to keep so close to one’s heart; only, what 
is so very beautiful can never be quite a pain. Well; after 
studying it in this way, I know not how many times, I came 
home, and have done my best to transfer the image to can- 
vas.” 

“Here it is, then,” said Miriam, contemplating Hilda’s 
work with great interest and delight, mixed with the pain- 
ful sympathy that the picture excited. “Everywhere we see 
oil-paintings, crayon-sketches, cameos, engravings, litho- 
graphs, pretending to be Beatrice, and representing the 
poor girl with blubbered eyes, a leer of coquetry, a merry 
look as if she were dancing, a piteous look as if she were 
beaten, and twenty other modes of fantastic mistake. But 
here is Guido’s very Beatrice ; she that slept in the dungeon, 
and awoke, betimes, to ascend the scaffold. And now that 
you have done it, Hilda, can you interpret what the feeling 

is, that gives this picture such a mysterious force? For my 
part, though deeply sensible of its influence, I cannot seize 

it. ” 

**Nor can I, in words,” replied her friend. “But while I 
was painting her, I felt all the time as if she were trying 
to escape from my gaze. She knows that her sorrow is so 
strange and so immense, that she ought to be solitary for- 
ever, both for the world’s sake and her own; and this is the 

65 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

reason we feel such a distance between Beatrice and our- 
selvesj even when our eyes meet hers. It is infinitely heart- 
breaking to meet her glance^ and to feel that nothing can 
be done to help or comfort her; neither does she ask help 
or comfortj knowing the hopelessness of her case better 
than we do. She is a fallen angel^ — fallen, and yet sin- 
less; and it is only this depth of sorrow, with its weight 
and darkness, that keeps her down upon earth, and 
brings her within our view even while it sets her beyond 
our reach.” 

“You deem her sinless.^” asked Miriam; “that is not 
so plain to me. If I can pretend to see at all into that dim 
region, whence she gazes so strangely and sadly at us, 
Beatrice’s own conscience does not acquit her of something 
evil; and never to be forgiven!” 

“Sorrow so black as hers oppresses her very nearly as sin 
would,” said Hilda. 

“Then,” inquired Miriam, “do you think that there was 
no sin in the deed for which she suifered?” 

“Ah!” replied Hilda, shuddering, “I really had quite 
forgotten Beatrice’s history, and was thinking of her only 
as the picture seems to reveal her character. Yes, yes; it 
was terrible guilt, an inexpiable crime, and she feels it to be 
so. Therefore it is that the forlorn creature so longs to 
elude our eyes, and forever vanish away into nothingness! 
Her doom is just!” 

“O Hilda, your innocence is like a sharp steel sword!” 
exclaimed her friend. “Your judgments are often terribly 
severe, though you seem all made up of gentleness and 
mercy. Beatrice’s sin may not have been so great: perhaps 
it was no sin at all, but the best virtue possible in the cir- 
cumstances. If she viewed it as a sin, it may have been 
because her nature was too feeble for the fate imposed 
upon her. Ah !” continued Miriam, passionately, “if I could 

66 


BEATRICE 


only get within her consciousness! — if I could but clasp 
Beatrice Cenci’s ghost, and draw it into myself! I would 
give my life to know whether she thought herself innocent, 
or the one great criminal since time began/’ 

As Miriam gave utterance to these words, Hilda looked 
from the picture into her face, and was startled to observe 
that her friend’s expression had become almost exactly that 
of the portrait; as if her passionate wish and struggle to 
penetrate poor Beatrice’s mystery had been successful. 

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Miriam, do not look so!” she 
cried. “What an actress you are! And I never guessed it 
before. Ah! now you are yourself again!” she added, 
kissing her. “Leave Beatrice to me in future.” 

“Cover up your magical picture, then,” replied her friend, 
“else I never can look away from it. It is strange, dear 
Hilda, how an innocent, delicate, white soul like yours 
has been able to seize the subtile mystery of this portrait; 
as you surely must, in order to reproduce it so perfectly. 
Well; we will not talk of it any more. Do you know, I have 
come to you this morning on a small matter of business. 
Will you undertake it for me?” 

“Oh, certainly,” said Hilda, laughing; “if you choose to 
trust me with business.” 

“Nay, it is not a matter of any difficulty,” answered 
Miriam; “merely to take charge of this packet, and keep it 
for me awhile.” 

“But why not keep it yourself?’* asked Hilda. 

“Partly because it will be safer in your charge,” said her 
friend. “I am a careless sort of person in ordinary things ; 
while you, for all you dwell so high above the world, have 
certain little housewifely ways of accuracy and order. The 
packet is of some slight importance; and yet, it may be, I 
shall not ask you for it again. In a week or two, you know, 
I am leaving Rome. You, setting at defiance the malarial 

67 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


fever, mean to stay here and haunt your beloved galleries 
through the summer. Now, four months hence, unless you 
hear more from me, I would have you deliver the packet 
according to its address/" 

Hilda read the direction; it was to Signore Luca Bar- 
boni, at the Palazzo Cenci, third piano. 

“I will deliver it with my own hand,” said she, “precisely 
four months from today, unless you bid me to the contrary. 
Perhaps I shall meet the ghost of Beatrice in that grim old 
palace of her forefathers."’ 

“In that case,” rejoined Miriam, “do not fail to speak to 
her, and try to win her confidence. Poor thing! she would 
be all the better for pouring her heart out freely, and would 
be glad to do it, if she were sure of sympathy. It irks my 
brain and heart to think of her, all shut up within herself.” 
She withdrew the cloth that Hilda had drawn over the 
picture and took another long look at it, — “Poor sister 
Beatrice! for she was still a woman, Hilda, still a sister, be 
her sin or sorrow what they might. How well you have 
done it, Hilda ! I know not whether Guido will thank you, 
or be jealous of your rivalship.” 

“Jealous, indeed!” exclaimed Hilda. “If Guido had not 
wrought through me, my pains would have been thrown 
away.” 

“After all,” resumed Miriam, “if a woman had painted 
the original picture, there might have been something in it 
which we miss now. I have a great mind to undertake a 
copy myself, and try to give it what it lacks. Well; good- 
by. But, stay! I am going for a little airing to the 
grounds of the Villa Borghese this afternoon. You will 
think it very foolish, but I always feel the safer in your 
company, Hilda, slender little maiden as you are. Will you 
come ?” 

“Ah, not to-day, dearest Miriam,” she replied; “I have set 

68 


BEATRICE 


my heart on giving another touch or two to this picture^ and 
shall not stir abroad till nearly sunset.” 

“Farewell, then,” said her visitor. “I leave you in your 
dove-cote. What a sweet, strange life you lead here; con- 
versing with the souls of the old masters, feeding and fond- 
ling your sister-doves, and trimming the Virgin’s lamp! 
Hilda, do you ever pray to the Virgin while you tend her 
shrine.^” 

“Sometimes I have been moved to do so,” replied the 
Dove, blushing, and lowering her eyes; “she was a woman 
once. Do you think it would be wrong .^” 

“Nay, that is for you to judge,” said Miriam; “but when 
you pray next, dear friend, remember me!” 

She went down the long descent of the lower staircase, 
and just as she reached the street the flock of doves again 
took their hurried flight from the pavement to the topmost 
window. She threw her eyes upward and beheld them 
hovering about Hilda’s head; for, after her friend’s de- 
parture, the girl had been more impressed than before by 
something very sad and troubled in her manner. She was, 
therefore, leaning forth from her airy abode, and flinging 
down a kind, maidenly kiss, and a gesture of farewell, in 
the hope that these might alight upon Miriam’s heart, and 
comfort its unknown sorrow a little. Kenyon the sculptor, 
who chanced to be passing the head of the street, took note 
of that ethereal kiss, and wished that he could have caught 
it in the air and got Hilda’s leave to keep it. 


69 


CHAPTER Vni 
The Suburban Villa 

Donatello^ wliile it was still a doubtful question betwixt 
afternoon and morning, set forth to keep the appointment 
which Miriam had carelessly tendered him in the grounds 
of the Villa Borghese. 

The entrance to these grounds (as all my readers know, 
for everybody nowadays has been in Rome) is just outside 
of the Porta del Popolo. Passing beneath that not very im- 
pressive specimen of Michael Angelo’s architecture, a min- 
ute’s walk will transport the visitor from the small, uneasy, 
lava stones of the Roman pavement into broad, gravelled 
carriage-drives, whence a little farther stroll brings him 
to the soft turf of a beautiful seclusion. A seclusion, but 
seldom a solitude; for priest, noble, and populace, stranger 
and native, all who breathe Roman air, find free admission, 
and come hither to taste the languid enjoyment of the day- 
dream that they call life. 

But Donatello’s enjoyment was of a livelier kind. He 
soon began to draw long and delightful breaths among 
those shadowy walks. Judging by the pleasure which the 
sylvan character of the scene excited in him, it might be 
no merely fanciful theory to set him down as the kinsman, 
not far remote, of that wild, sweet, playful, rustic creature, 
to whose marble image he bore so striking a resemblance. 
How mirthful a discovery would it be (and yet with a 
touch of pathos in it), if the breeze which sported fondly 
with his clustering locks were to waft them suddenly aside, 

70 


THE SUBURBAN VILLA 

and show a pair of leaf-shaped^ furry ears ! What an 
honest strain of wildness would it indicate! and into what 
regions of rich mystery would it extend Donatello’s sympa- 
thies^ to be thus linked (and by no monstrous chain) with 
what we call the inferior tribes of beings whose simplicity, 
mingled with his human intelligence, might partly restore 
what man has lost of the divine! 

The scenery amid which the youth now strayed was such 
as arrays itself in the imagination when we read the beau- 
tiful old myths, and fancy a brighter sky, a softer turf, 
a more picturesque arrangement of venerable trees, than 
we find in the rude and untrained landscapes of the West- 
ern world. The ilex-trees, so ancient and time-honored 
were they, seemed to have lived for ages undisturbed, and 
to feel no dread of profanation by the axe any more than 
overthrow by tlie thunder-stroke. It had already passed 
out of their dreamy old memories that only a few years ago 
they were grievously imperilled by the Gaul’s last assault 
upon the walls of Rome. As if confident in the long peace 
of their lifetime, they assumed attitudes of indolent repose. 
They leaned over the green turf in ponderous grace, throw- 
ing abroad their great branches without danger of interfer- 
ing with other trees, though other majestic trees grew near 
enough for dignified society, but too distant for constraint. 
Never was there a more venerable quietude than that which 
slept among their sheltering boughs; never a sweeter sun- 
shine than that now gladdening the gentle gloom which 
these leafy patriarchs strove to diffuse over the swelling 
and subsiding lawns. 

In other portions of the grounds the stone-pines lifted 
their dense clump of branches upon a slender length of 
stem, so high that they looked like green islands in the 
air, flinging down a shadow upon the turf so far oflT that 
you hardly knew which tree had made it. Again, there 

71 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


were avenues of cypress,, resembling dark flames of huge 
funeral candles^ which spread dusk and twilight roimd 
about them instead of cheerful radiance. The more open 
spots were all a-bloom, even so early in the season^ with 
anemones of wondrous size^ both white and rose-colored, 
and violets that betrayed themselves by their rich fragrance, 
even if their blue eyes failed to meet your own. Daisies, 
too, were abundant, but larger than the modest little Eng- 
lish flower, and therefore of small account. 

These wooded and flowery lawns are more beautiful than 
the finest of English park-scenery, more touching, more 
impressive, through the neglect that leaves Nature so much 
to her own ways and methods. Since man seldom inter- 
feres with her, she sets to work in her quiet way and makes 
herself at home. There is enough of human care, it is true, 
bestowed, long ago and still bestowed, to prevent wildness 
from growing into deformity; and the result is an ideal 
landscape, a woodland scene that seems to have been pro- 
jected out of the poet’s mind. If the ancient Faun were 
other than a mere creation of old poetry, and could have 
reappeared anywhere, it must have been in such a scene 
as this. 

In the openings of the wood there are fountains plash- 
ing into marble basins, the depths of which are shaggy 
with water- weeds; or they tumble like natural cascades from 
rock to rock, sending their murmur afar, to make the quiet 
and silence more appreciable. Scattered here and there 
with careless artifice, stand old altars bearing Roman in- 
scriptions. Statues, gray with the long corrosion of even 
that soft atmosphere, half hide and half reveal themselves, 
high on pedestals, or perhaps fallen and broken on the turf. 
Terminal figures, columns of marble or granite porticos, 
arches, are seen in the vistas of the wood-paths, either veri- 
table relics of antiquity, or with so exquisite a touch of 

72 


THE SUBURBAN VILLA 


artful ruin on them that they are better than if really 
antique. At all events, grass grows on the tops of the 
shattered pillars, and weeds and flowers root themselves 
in the chinks of the massive arches and fronts of temples, 
and clamber at large over their pediments, as if this were 
the thousandth summer since their winged seeds alighted 
there. 

What a strange idea — what a needless labor — to con- 
struct artificial ruins in Rome, the native soil of ruin! 
But even these sportive imitations, wrought by man in 
emulation of what time has done to temples and palaces, 
are perhaps centuries old, and, beginning as illusions, have 
grown to be venerable in sober earnest. The result of all 
is a scene, pensive, lovely, dream-like, enjoyable and sad, 
such as is to be found nowhere save in these princely villa- 
residences in the neighborhood of Rome; a scene that must 
have required generations and ages, during which growth, 
decay, and man’s intelligence wrought kindly together, to 
render it so gently wild as we behold it now. 

The final charm is bestowed by the malaria. There is a 
piercing, thrilling, delicious kind of regret in the 
idea of so much beauty thrown away, or only enjoy- 
able at its half-development, in winter and early spring, 
and never to be dwelt amongst, as the home-scenery of any 
human being. For if you come hither in summer, and stray 
through these glades in the golden sunset, fever walks 
arm in arm with you, and death awaits you at the end of the 
dim vista. Thus the scene is like Eden in its loveliness; like 
Eden, too, in the fatal spell that removes it beyond the 
scope of man’s actual possessions. But Donatello felt 
nothing of this dream-like melancholy that haunts the spot. 
As he passed among the sunny shadows, his spirit seemed 
to acquire new elasticity. The flicker of the sunshine, the 
sparkle of the fountain’s gush, the dance of the leaf upon 

73 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


the bough, the woodland fragrance, the green freshness, the 
old sylvan peace and freedom, were all intermingled in 
those long breaths which he drew. 

The ancient dust, the mouldiness of Rome, the dead 
atmosphere in which he had wasted so many months, the 
hard pavements, the smell of ruin and decaying generations, 
the chill palaces, the convent-bells, the heavy incense of 
altars, the life that he had led in those dark, narrow streets, 
among priests, soldiers, nobles, artists, and women, — all 
the sense of these things rose from the young man’s con- 
sciousness like a cloud which had darkened over him with- 
out his knowing how densely. 

He drank in the natural influences of the scene, and 
was intoxicated as by an exhilarating wine. He ran races 
with himself along the gleam and shadow of the wood- 
paths. He leaj^t up to catch the overhanging bough of an 
ilex, and swinging himself by it alighted far onward, as if 
he had flown thither through the air. In a sudden rapture 
he embraced the trunk of a sturdy tree, and seemed to im- 
agine it a creature worthy of affection and capable of a 
tender response; he clasped it closely in his arms, as a Faun 
might have clasped the warm feminine grace of the Nymph, 
whom antiquity supposed to dwell within that rough, encir- 
cling rind. Then, in order to bring himself closer to the 
genial earth, with which his kindred instincts linked him so 
strongly, he threw himself at full length on the turf, and 
pressed down his lips, kissing the violets and daisies, which 
kissed him back again, though shyly, in their maiden 
fashion. 

While he lay there, it was pleasant to see how the green 
and blue lizards, who had been basking on some rock or on 
a fallen pillar that absorbed the warmth of the sun, scrupled 
not to scramble over him with their small feet; and how the 
birds, alighted on the nearest twigs and sang their little 

74 


THE SUBURBAN VILLA 


roundelays unbroken by any chirrup of alarm; they recog- 
nized him^ it may be^ as something akin to themselves, or 
else they fancied that he was rooted and grew there; for 
these wild pets of nature dreaded him no more in his buoy- 
ant life than if a mound of soil and grass and flowers had 
long since covered his dead body, converting it back to the 
sympathies from which human existence had estranged it. 

All of us, after a long abode in cities, have felt the blood 
gush more joyously through our veins with the first breath 
of rural air; few could feel it so much as Donatello, a 
creature of simple elements, bred in the sweet sylvan life of 
Tuscany, and for months back dwelling amid the mouldy 
gloom and dim splendor of old Rome. Nature has been 
shut out for numberless centuries from those stony-hearted 
streets, to which he had latterly grown accustomed; there 
is no trace of her, except for what blades of grass spring 
out of the pavements of the less trodden piazzas, or what 
weeds cluster and tuft themselves on the cornices of ruins. 
Therefore his joy was like that of a child that had gone 
astray from home, and finds him suddenly in his mother’s 
arms again. 

At last, deeming it full time for Miriam to keep her tryst, 
he climbed to the tiptop of the tallest tree, and thence 
looked about him, swaying to and fro in the gentle breeze, 
which was like the respiration of that great leafy, living 
thing. Donatello saw beneath him the whole circuit of the 
enchanted ground; the statues and columns pointing up- 
ward from among the shrubbery, the fountains flashing in 
the sunlight, the paths winding hither and thither, and 
continually finding out some nook of new and ancient pleas- 
antness. He saw the villa, too, with its marble front in- 
crusted all over with bas-reliefs, and statues in its many 
niches. It was as beautiful as a fairy palace, and seemed 
an abode in which the lord and lady of this fair domain 

75 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


might fitly dwells and come forth each morning to enjoy 
as sweet a life as their happiest dreams of the past night 
could have depicted. All this he saw^ but his first glance 
had taken in too wide a sweep^ and it was not till his eyes 
fell almost directly beneath him^ that Donatello beheld 
Miriam just turning into the path that led across the roots 
of his very tree. 

He descended among the foliage, waiting for her to 
come close to the trunk, and then suddenly dropped from 
an impending bough, and alighted at her side. It was 
as if the swaying of the branches had let a ray of sunlight 
through. The same ray likewise glimmered among the 
gloomy meditations that encompassed Miriam, and lit up 
the pale, dark beauty of her face, while it responded pleas- 
antly to Donatello’s glance. 

“I hardly know,” said she, smiling, “whether you have 
sprouted out of the earth, or fallen from the clouds. In 
either case you are welcome.” 

And they walked onward together. 


76 


CHAPTER IX 


The Faun and Nymph 

Miriam’s sadder moodj it might be^ had at first an effect 
on Donatello’s spirits. It checked the joyous ebullition into 
which they would otherwise have effervesced when he found 
himself in her society, not, as heretofore, in the old gloom 
of Rome, but under that bright soft sky and in those Arca- 
dian woods. He was silent for a while; it being, indeed, 
seldom Donatello’s impulse to express himself copiously in 
words. His usual modes of demonstration were by the 
natural language of gesture, the instinctive movement of his 
agile frame, and the unconscious play of his features, 
which, within a limited range of thought and emotion, would 
speak volumes in a moment. 

By and by, his own mood seemed to brighten Miriam’s, 
and was reflected back upon himself. He began inevitably, 
as it were, to dance along the wood-path, flinging himself 
into attitudes of strange comic grace. Often, too, he ran 
a little way in advance of his companion, and then stood 
to watch her as she approached along the shadowy and 
sun-flecked path. With every step she took, he expressed 
his joy at her nearer and nearer presence by what might 
be thought an extravagance of gesticulation, but which 
doubtless was the language of the natural man, though laid 
aside and forgotten by other men, now that words have been 
feebly substituted in the place of signs and symbols. He 
gave Miriam the idea of a being not precisely man, nor 
yet a child, but, in a high and beautiful sense, an animal, — 

77 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

a creature in a state of development less than what man- 
kind has attained, yet the more perfect within itself for 
that very deficiency. This idea filled her mobile imagina- 
tion with agreeable fantasies, which, after smiling at them 
herself, she tried to convey to the yoimg man. 

“What are you, my friend?” she exclaimed, always keep- 
ing in mind his singular resemblance to the Faun of the 
Capitol. “If you are, in good truth, that wild and pleasant 
creature whose face you wear, pray make me known to 
your kindred. They will be found hereabouts, if anywhere. 
Knock at the rough rind of this ilex-tree, and summon forth 
the Dryad! Ask the water-nymph to rise dripping from 
yonder fountain, and exchange a moist pressure of the hand 
with me! Do not fear that I shall shrink, even if one of 
your rough cousins, a hairy Satyr, should come capering 
on his goat-legs out of the haunts of far antiquity, and 
propose to dance with me among these lawns ! And will 
not Bacchus, — with whom you consorted so familiarly of 
old, and who loved you so well, — will he not meet us here, 
and squeeze rich grapes into his cup for you and me?” 

Donatello smiled; he laughed heartily, indeed, in sym- 
pathy with the mirth that gleamed out of Miriam’s deep, 
dark eyes. But he did not seem quite to understand her 
mirthful talk, nor to be disposed to explain what kind of 
creature he was, or to inquire with what divine or poetic 
kindred his companion feigned to link him. He appeared 
only to know that Miriam was beautiful, and that she smiled 
graciously upon him; that the present moment was very 
sweet, and himself most happy, with the sunshine, the 
sylvan scenery, and woman’s kindly charm, which it en- 
closed within its small circumference. It was delightful to 
see the trust which he reposed in Miriam, and his pure joy 
in her propinquity; he asked nothing, sought nothing, save 
to be near the beloved object, and brimmed over with ec- 

78 


THE FAUN AND NYMPH 


stasy at that simple boon. A creature of the happy tribes 
below us sometimes shows the capacity of this enjoyment; 
a man, seldom or never. 

“Donatello,” said Miriam, looking at him thoughtfully, 
but amused, yet not without a shade of sorrow, “you seem 
very happy; what makes you so.^” 

“Because I love you!” answered Donatello. 

He made this momentous confession as if it were the 
most natural thing in the world; and on her part, — such was 
the contagion of his simplicity, — Miriam heard it without 
anger or disturbance, though with no responding emotion. 
It was as if they had strayed across the limits of Arcadia, 
and come under a civil polity where young men might 
avow their passion with as little restraint as a bird pipes 
its note to a similar purpose. 

“Why should you love me,' foolish boy.^” said she. “We 
have no points of sympathy at all. There are not two 
creatures more imlike, in this wide world, than you and I !” 

“You are yourself, and I am Donatello,” replied he. 
“Therefore I love you! There needs no other reason.” 

Certainly, there was no better or more explicable reason. 
It might have been imagined that Donatello’s unsophisti- 
cated heart would be more readily attracted to a feminine 
nature of clear simplicity like his own, than to one already 
turbid with grief or wrong, as Miriam’s seemed to be. 
Perhaps, on the other hand, his character needed the dark 
element, which it found in her. The force and energy of 
will, that sometimes flashed through her eyes, may have 
taken him captive; or, not improbably, the varying lights 
and shadows of her temper, now so mirthful, and anon 
so sad with mysterious gloom, had bewitched the youth. 
Analyze the matter as we may, the reason assigned by 
Donatello himself was as satisfactory as we are likely to 
attain. 


79 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


Miriam could not think seriously of the avowal that had 
passed. He held out his love so freely^ in his open palm, 
that she felt it could be nothing but a toy, which she might 
play with for an instant, and give back again. And yet 
Donatello’s heart was so fresh a fountain, that, had Miriam 
been ruore world- worn than she was, she might have found 
it exquisite to slake her thirst with the feelings that welled 
up and brimmed over from it. She was far, very far, from 
the dusty mediaeval epoch, when some women have a taste 
for such refreshment. Even for her, however, there was 
an inexpressible charm in the simplicity that prompted 
Donatello’s words and deeds; though, unless she caught 
them in precisely the true light, they seemed but folly, the 
offspring of a maimed or imperfectly developed intellect. 
Alternately, she almost admired, or wholly scorned him, 
and knew not which estimate resulted from the deeper ap- 
preciation. But it could not, she decided for herself, be 
other than an innocent pastime, if they two — sure to be 
separated by their different paths in life, to-morrow — 
were to gather up some of the little pleasures that chanced 
to grow about their feet, like the violets and wood-anem- 
ones, to-day. 

Yet an impulse of rectitude impelled Miriam to give 
him what she still held to be a needless warning against 
an imaginary peril. 

“If you were wiser, Donatello, you would think me a 
dangerous person,” said she. “If you follow my footsteps, 
they will lead you to no good. You ought to be afraid 
of me.” 

“I would as soon think of fearing the air we breathe,” 
he replied. 

“And well you may, for it is full of malaria,” said 
Miriam; she went on, hinting at an intangible confession, 
such as persons with overburdened hearts often make to 

80 


THE FAUN AND NYMPH 


children or dumb animals^ or to holes in the earthy where 
they think their secrets may be at once revealed and buried. 
“Those who come too near me are in danger of great mis- 
ichiefs_, I do assure you. Take warning, therefore! It is 
a sad fatality that has brought you from your home among 
the Apennines, — some rusty old castle, I suppose, with a 
village at its foot, and an Arcadian environment of vine- 
yards, fig-trees, and olive-orchards, — a sad mischance, I 
say, that has transplanted you to my side. You have had a 
happy life hitherto, — have you not, Donatello.^” 

“Oh, yes,” answered the young man; and, though not 
‘of a retrospective turn, he made the best effort he eould 
To send his mind back into the past. “I remember think- 
j ing it happiness to dance with the contadinas at a village 
feast; to taste the new, sweet wine at vintage-time, and the 
old, ripened wine, which our podere is famous for, in the 
cold winter evenings; and to devour great, luscious figs, 
and apricots, peaches, cherries, and melons. I was often 
happy in the woods, too, with hounds and horses, and very 
happy in watching all sorts of creatures and birds that 
\ haunt the leafy solitudes. But never half so happy as 
t now !” 

“In these delightful groves?” she asked. 

I “Here and with you,” answered Donatello. “Just as 
we are now.” 

“What a fulness of content in him! How silly, and 
how delightful!” said Miriam to herself. Then address- 
ing him again: “But, Donatello, how long will this happi- 
ness last?” 

“How long!” he exelaimed; for it perplexed him even 
more to think of the future than to remember the past. 
“Why should it have any end? How long! Forever! for- 
ever! forever!” 

“The child! the simpleton!” said Miriam, with sudden 
81 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

laughter, and checking it as suddenly. “But is he a sim- 
pleton indeed? Here, in those few natural words, he has 
expressed that deep sense, that profound conviction of its 
own immortality, which genuine love never fails to bring. 
He perplexes me, — yes, and bewitches me, — wild, gentle, j 
beautiful creature that he is! It is like playing with a I 
young greyhound!” 

Her eyes filled with tears, at the same time that a smile 



delight and grief at once, in feeling this zephyr of a new j 
affection, with its untainted freshness, blow over her weary, j 
stifled heart, which had no right to be revived by it. The i 
very exquisiteness of the enjoyment made her know that 
it ought to be a forbidden one. 

“Donatello,” she hastily exclaimed, “for your own sake, . 
leave me ! It is not such a happy thing as you imagine it, 
to wander in these woods with me, a girl from another 
land, burdened with a doom that she tells to none. I 
might make you dread me, — perhaps hate me, — if I chose; 
and I must choose, if I find you loving me too well !” 

“I fear nothing!” said Donatello, looking into her un- 
fathomable eyes with perfect trust. “I love always!” 

“I speak in vain,” thought Miriam within herself. 

“Well, then, for this one hour, let me be such as he 
imagines me. To-morrow will be time enough to come 
back to my reality. My reality! what is it? Is the past 
so indestructible? the future so immitigable? Is the dark 
dream, in which I walk, of such solid, stony substance, 
that there can be no escape out of its dungeon? Be it so. 
There is, at least, that ethereal quality in my spirit, that 
it can make me as gay as Donatello himself, — for this one 
hour !” 

And immediately she brightened up, as if an inward 
flame, heretofore stifled, were now permitted to fill her 

82 


THE FAUN AND NYMPH 


with its happy lustre, glowing through her cheeks and 
dancing in her eye-beams. 

Donatello, brisk and cheerful as he seemed before, 
'showed a sensibility to Miriam’s gladdened mood by break- 
ling into still wilder and ever- varying activity. He frisked 
iaround her, bubbling over with joy, which clothed itself 
iin words that had little individual meaning, and in snatches 
|of song that seemed as natural as bird-notes. Then they 
iboth laughed together, and heard their own laughter re- 
turning in the echoes, and laughed again at the response, 
so that the ancient and solemn grove became full of merri- 
iment for these two blithe spirits. A bird happening to sing 
cheerily, Donatello gave a peculiar call, and the little 
feathered creature came fluttering about his head, as if it 
had known him through many summers. 

“How close he stands to nature !” said Miriam, observing 
this pleasant familiarity between her companion and the 
ibird. “He shall make me as natural as himself for this one 
hour.” 

! As they strayed through that sweet wilderness, she felt 
imore and more the influence of his elastic temperament. 
Miriam was an impressible and impulsive creature, as 
unlike herself, in different moods, as if a melancholy 
maiden and a glad one were both bound within the girdle 
about her waist, and kept in magic thraldom by the brooch 
that clasped it. Naturally, it is true, she was the more 
inclined to melancholy, yet fully capable of that high frolic 
of the spirits which richly compensates for many gloomy 
hours; if her soul was apt to lurk in the darkness of a 
cavern, she could sport madly in the sunshine before the 
cavern’s mouth. Except the freshest mirth of animal 
spirits, like Donatello’s, there is no merriment, no wild ex- 
hilaration, comparable to that of melancholy people escap- 

83 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


ing from the dark region in which it is their custom to 
keep themselves imprisoned. 

So the shadowy Miriam almost outdid Donatello on his , 
own ground. They ran races with each other, side by side, 
with shouts and laughter; they pelted one another with ; 
early flowers, and gathering them up twined them with j 
green leaves into garlands for both their heads. They ' 
played together like children, or creatures of immortal : 
youth. So much had they flimg aside the sombre habitudes ) 
of daily life, that they seemed born to be sportive forever, j 
and endowed with eternal mirthfulness instead of any ] 
deeper joy. It was a glimpse far backward into Arcadian | 
life, or, further still, into the Golden Age, before mankind 
was burdened with sin and sorrow, and before pleasure had 
been darkened with those shadows that bring it into high 
relief, and make it happiness. 

“Hark!’" cried Donatello, stopping short, as he was 
about to bind Miriam’s fair hands with flowers, and lead 
her along in triumph, “there is music somewhere in the 
grove !” 

“It is your kinsman. Pan, most likely,” said Miriam, 
“playing on his pipe. Let us go seek him, and make him 
puff* out his rough cheeks and pipe his merriest air ! Come ; 
the strain of music will guide us onward like a gayly colored 
thread of silk.” 

“Or like a chain of flowers,” responded Donatello, draw- 
ing her along by that which he had twined. “This way ! — 
Come !” 


84 


CHAPTER X 
The Sylvan Dance 

As the music came fresher on their ears, they danced 
to its cadence, extemporizing new steps and attitudes. Each 
varying movement had a grace which might have been 
worth putting into marble, for the long delight of days 
, to come, but vanished with the movement that gave it birth, 
and was effaced from memory by another. In Miriam’s 
motion, freely as she flung herself into the frolic of the 
hour, there was still an artful beauty; in Donatello’s, there 
was a charm of indescribable grotesqueness hand in hand 
with grace ; sweet, bewitching, most provocative of laughter, 
and yet akin to pathos, so deeply did it touch the heart. 
This was the ultimate peculiarity, the final touch, distin- 
guishing between the sylvan creature and the beautiful 
companion at his side. Setting apart only this, Miriam re- 
sembled a Nymph, as much as Donatello did a Faun. 

There were flitting moments, indeed, when she played 
the sylvan character as perfectly as he. Catching glimpses 
of her, then, you would have fancied that an oak had sun- 
dered its rough bark to let her dance freely forth, en- 
dowed with the same spirit in her human form as that 
which rustles in the leaves ; or that she had emerged through 
the pebbly bottom of a fountain, a water-nymph, to play 
and sparkle in the sunshine, flinging a quivering light 
around her, and suddenly disappearing in a shower of rain- 
bow drops. 

As the fountain sometimes subsides into its basin, so in 
85 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


Miriam there were symptoms that the frolic of her spirits 
would at last tire itself out. 

“Ah! Donatello/’ cried she^ laughing, as she stopped to 
take breath; “you have an unfair advantage over me! I 
am no true creature of the woods; while you are a real 
Faun, I do believe. When your curls shook just now, me- 
thought I had a peep at the pointed ears.” 

Donatello snapped his fingers above his head, as fauns 
and satyrs taught us first to do, and seemed to radiate jol- 
lity out of his whole nimble person. Nevertheless, there 
was a kind of dim apprehension in his face, as if he dreaded 
that a moment’s pause might break the spell, and snatch 
away the sportive companion whom he had waited for 
through so many dreary months. 

“Dance! dance!” cried he, joyously. “If we take breath, 
we shall be as we were yesterday. There, now, is the 
music, just beyond this clump of trees. Dance, Miriam, 
dance !” 

They had now reached an open, grassy glade (of which 
there are many in that artfully constructed wilderness), set 
round with stone seats, on which the aged moss had kindly 
essayed to spread itself instead of cushions. On one of the 
stone benches sat the musicians, whose strains had enticed 
our wild couple thitherward. They proved to be a vagrant 
band, such as Rome, and all Italy, abounds with; compris- 
ing a harp, a flute, and a violin, which, though greatly the 
worse for wear, the performers had skill enough to pro- 
voke and modulate into tolerable harmony. It chanced 
to be a feast-day; and, instead of playing in the sun- 
scorched piazzas of the city, or beneath the windows of 
some unresponsive palace, they had bethought themselves 
to try the echoes of these woods; for, on the festas of the 
Church, Rome scatters its merry-makers all abroad, ripe for 
the dance or any other pastime. 

86 


THE SYLVAN DANCE 


As Miriam and Donatello emerged from among the trees, 
the musicians scraped, tinkled, or blew, each according to 
his various kind of instrument, more inspiringly than ever. 
A dark-cheeked little girl, with bright black eyes, stood by, 
shaking a tambourine set around with tinkling bells, and 
thumping it on its parchment head. Without interrupting 
his brisk, though measured, movement, Donatello snatched 
away this unmelodious contrivance, and flourishing it above 
his head, produced music of indescribable potency, still 
dancing with frisky step, and striking the tambourine, 
and ringing its little bells, all in one jovial act. 

It might be that there was magic in the sound, or con- 
tagion, at least, in the spirit which had got possession of 
Miriam and himself, for very soon a number of festal 
people were drawn to the spot, and struck into the dance, 
singly, or in pairs, as if they were all gone mad with j ollity. 
A.mong them were some of the plebeian damsels whom we 
meet bareheaded in the Roman streets, with silver stilettos 
thrust through their glossy hair; the contadinas, too, from 
the Campagna and the villages, with their rich and pic- 
turesque costumes of scarlet and all bright hues, such as 
fairer maidens might not venture to put on. Then came the 
modern Roman from Trastevere, perchance, with his old 
cloak drawn about him like a toga, which anon, as his 
active motion heated him, he flung aside. Three French 
soldiers capered freely into the throng, in wide scarlet 
trousers, their short swords dangling at their sides; and 
three German artists in gray flaccid hats and flaunting 
beards; and one of the pope’s Swiss guardsmen in the 
strange, motley garb which Michael Angelo contrived for 
them. Two young English tourists (one of them a lord) 
took contadine partners and dashed in, as did also a shaggy 
man in goat-skin breeches, who looked like rustic Pan in 
person, and footed it as merrily as he. Besides the above 

87 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

there was a herdsman or two from the Campagna^ and a 
few peasants in sky-blue jackets^ and small-clothes tied 
with ribbons at the knees; haggard and sallow were these 
last^ poor serfs^ having little to eat and nothing but the 
malaria to breathe; but still they plucked up a momen- 
tary spirit and joined hands in Donatello’s dance. 

Here, as it seemed, had the Golden Age come back again 
within the precincts of this sunny glade, thawing mankind 
out of their cold formalities, releasing them from irksome 
restraint, mingling them together in such childlike gayety 
that new flowers (of which the old bosom of the earth 
is full) sprang up beneath their footsteps. The sole excep- 
tion to the geniality of the moment, as we have understood, 
was seen in a countryman of our own, who sneered at the 
spectacle, and declined to compromise his dignity by making 
part of it. 

The harper thrummed with rapid fingers; the violin- 
player flashed his bow back and forth across the strings; 
the flautist poured his breath in quick puffs of jollity, 
while Donatello shook the tambourine above his head, and 
led the merry throng with unweariable steps. As they fol- 
lowed one another in a wild ring of mirth, it seemed the 
realization of one of those bas-reliefs where a dance of 
nymphs, satyrs, or bacchanals is twined around the circle of 
an antique vase; or it was like the sculptured scene on the 
front and sides of a sarcophagus, where, as often as any 
other device, a festive procession mocks the ashes and 
white bones that are treasured up within. You might take 
it for a marriage-pageant; but after a while, if you look 
at these merry-makers, following them from end to end of 
the marble coffin, you doubt whether their gay movement 
is leading them to a happy close. A youth has suddenly 
fallen in the dance; a chariot is overturned and broken, 
flinging the charioteer headlong to the ground; a maiden 

88 


THE SYLVAN DANCE 


seems to have grovim faint or weary and is drooping on the 
bosom of a friend. Always some tragic incident is shadowed 
forth or thrust sidelong into the spectacle; and when once it 
has caught your eye you can look no more at the festal 
portions of the scene^ except with reference to this one 
slightly suggested doom and sorrow. 

As in its mirth^ so in the darker characteristic here al- 
luded to, there was an analogy between the sculptured 
scene on the sarcophagus and the wild dance which we 
have been describing. In the midst of its madness and riot 
Miriam found herself suddenly confronted by a strange 
figure that shook its fantastic garments in the air, and 
pranced before her on its tip-toes, almost vying with the 
agility of Donatello himself. It was the model. 

A moment afterwards Donatello was aware that she had 
retired from the dance. He hastened towards her, and 
flung himself on the grass beside the stone bench on which 
Miriam was sitting. But a strange distance and unap- 
proachableness had all at once enveloped her; and though 
he saw her within reach of his arm, yet the light of her 
eyes seemed as far off as that of a star, nor was there any 
warmth in the melancholy smile with which she regarded 
him. 

“Come back!’’ cried he. “Why should this happy hour 
end so soon.^” 

“It must end here, Donatello,” she said in answer to 
his words and outstretched hand; “and such hours, I be- 
lieve, do not often repeat themselves in a lifetime. Let 
me go, my friend; let me vanish from you quietly among 
the shadows of these trees. See, the companions of our 
pastime are vanishing already !” 

Whether it was that the harp-strings were broken, the 
violin out of tune, or the flautist out of breath, so it chanced 
that the music had ceased, and the dancers come abruptly 

89 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


to a pause. All that motley throng of rioters was dissolved 
as suddenly as it had been drawn together. In Miriam’s 
remembrance the scene had a character of fantasy. It was 
as if a company of satyrs_, fauns^ and nymphs, with Pan 
in the midst of them, had been disporting themselves in 
these venerable woods only a moment ago; and now in an- 
other moment, because some profane eye had looked at them 
too closely, or some intruder had cast a shadow on their 
mirth, the sylvan pageant had utterly disappeared. If a 
few of the merry-makers lingered among the trees, they 
had hidden their racy peculiarities under the garb and as- 
pect of ordinary people, and sheltered themselves in the 
weary commonplace of daily life. Just an instant before 
it was Arcadia and the Golden Age. The spell being 
broken, it was now only that old tract of pleasure-ground, 
close by the people’s gate of Rome, — a tract where the 
crimes and calamities of ages, the many battles, blood reck- 
lessly poured out, and deaths of myriads, have corrupted 
all the soil, creating an influence that makes the air deadly 
to human lungs. 

“You must leave me,” said Miriam to Donatello, more 
imperatively than before; “have I not said it.^ Go; and 
look not behind you.” 

“Miriam,” whispered Donatello, grasping her hand 
forcibly, “who is it that stands in the shadow yonder, beck- 
oning you to follow him?” 

“Hush; leave me!” repeated Miriam. “Your hour is 
past; his hour has come.” 

Donatello still gazed in the direction which he had indi- 
cated, and the expression of his face was fearfully changed, 
being so disordered, perhaps with terror, — at all events 
with anger and invincible repugnance, — ^that Miriam hardly 
knew him. His lips were dra^vn apart so as to disclose his 
set teeth, thus giving him a look of animal rage, which we 

90 


THE SYLVAN DANCE 


seldom see except in persons of the simplest and rudest 
natures. A shudder seemed to pass through his very bones. 

“I hate him !” muttered he. 

“Be satisfied; I hate him too!” said Miriam. 

She had no thought of making this avowal, but was irre- 
sistibly drawn to it by the sympathy of the dark emotion 
in her own breast with that so strongly expressed by Dona- 
tello. Two drops of water or of blood do not more naturally 
flow into each other than did her hatred into his. 

“Shall I clutch him by the throat?” whispered Dona- 
tello, with a savage scowl. “Bid me do so, and we are rid 
of him forever.” 

“In Heaven’s name, no violence !” exclaimed Miriam, 
affrighted out of the scornful control which she had hitherto 
held over her companion, by the fierceness that he so sud- 
denly developed. “Oh, have pity on me, Donatello, if for 
nothing else, yet because in the midst of my wretchedness 
I let myself be your playmate for this one wild hour! Fol- 
low me no farther. Henceforth, leave me to my doom. 
Dear friend, — ^kind, simple, loving friend, — make me not 
more wretched by the remembrance of having thrown fierce 
hates or loves into the wellspring of your happy life!” 

“Not follow you!” repeated Donatello, soothed from 
anger into sorrow, less by the purport of what she said, 
than by the melancholy sweetness of her voice, — “not fol- 
low you ! What other path have I ?” 

“We will talk of it "'nee again,” said Miriam, still sooth- 
ingly; “soon — ^to-morrow — ^when you will; only leave me 
now.” 


91 


CHAPTER XI 


Fragmentary Sentences 

In the Borghese Grove, so recently uproarious with mer- 
riment and music, there remained only Miriam and her 
strange follower. 

A solitude had suddenly spread itself around them. It 
perhaps symbolized a peculiar character in the relation of 
these two, insulating them, and building up an insuperable 
barrier between their life-streams and other currents, which 
might seem to flow in close vicinity. For it is one of the 
chief earthly incommodities of some species of misfortune, 
or of a great crime, that it makes the actor in the one, or 
the sufferer of the other, an alien in the world, by interpos- 
ing a wholly unsympathetic medium betwixt himself and 
those whom he yearns to meet. 

Owing, it may be, to this moral estrangement, — ^this chill 
remoteness of their position, — there have come to us but a 
few vague whisperings of what passed in Miriam’s inter- 
view that afternoon with the sinister personage who 
had dogged her footsteps ever since the visit to the cata- 
comb. In weaving these mystic utterances into a contin- 
uous scene, we undertake a task resembling in its perplexity 
that of gathering up and piecing together the fragments 
of a letter which has been torn and scattered to the winds. 
Many words of deep significance, many entire sentences, 
and those possibly the most important ones, have flown 
too far on the winged breeze to be recovered. If we insert 
our own conjectural amendments, we perhaps give a 

92 


FRAGMENTARY SENTENCES 

purport utterly at variance with the true one. Yet unless 
we attempt something in this way, there must remain an 
unsightly gap, and a lack of continuousness and depend- 
ence in our narrative; so that it would arrive at certain 
inevitable catastrophes without due warning of their 
imminence. 

Of so much we are sure, that there seemed to be a sadly 
mysterious fascination in the influence of this ill-omened 
person over Miriam; it was such as beasts and reptiles 
of subtile and evil nature sometimes exercise upon their 
victims. Marvellous it was to see the hopelessness with 
which — being naturally of so courageous a spirit — she 
resigned herself to the thraldom in which he held her. 
That iron chain, of which some of the massive links were 
round her feminine waist, and the others in his ruthless 
hand, — or which, perhaps, bound the pair together by a 
bond equally torturing to each, — must have been forged 
in some such unhallowed furnace as is only kindled by 
evil passions and fed by evil deeds. 

Yet, let us trust, there may have been no crime in 
Miriam, but only one of those fatalities which are among 
the most insoluble riddles propounded to mortal compre- 
hension; the fatal decree by which every crime is made to 
be the agony of many innocent persons, as well as of the 
single guilty one. 

It was, at any rate, but a feeble and despairing kind 
of remonstrance which she had now the energy to oppose 
against his persecution. 

“You follow me too closely,” she said, in low, falter- 
ing accents; ‘‘you allow me too scanty room to draw my 
breath. Do you know what will be the end of this V* 

“I know well what must be the end,” he replied. 

“Tell me, then,” said Miriam, “that I may compare 
your foreboding with my own. Mine is a very dark one.” 

93 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

“Ther6 can be but one result^ and that soon/’ answered 
the model. “You must throw off your present mask 
and assume another. You must vanish out of the scene: 
quit Rome with me^, and leave no trace whereby to follow 
you. It is in my power, as you well know, to compel 
your acquiescence in my bidding. You are aware of the 
penalty of a refusal.” 

“Not that penalty with which you would terrify me,” 
said Miriam; “another there may be, but not so grievous.” 

“What is that other?” he inquired. 

“Death! simply death!” she answered. 

“Death,” said her persecutor, “is not so simple and 
opportune a thing as you imagine. You are strong and 
warm with life. Sensitive and irritable as your spirit is, 
these many months of trouble, this latter thraldom in which 
I hold you, have scarcely made your cheek paler than 
I saw it in your girlhood. Miriam, — for I forbear to 
speak another name, at which these leaves would shiver 
above our heads, — Miriam, you cannot die!” 

“Might not a dagger find my heart?” said she, for the 
first time meeting his eyes. “Would not poison make an 
end of me? Will not the Tiber drown me?” 

“It might,” he answered; “for I allow that you are 
mortal. But, Miriam, believe me, it is not your fate to 
die while there remains so much to be sinned and suffered 
in the world. We have a destiny which we must needs 
fulfil together. I, too, have struggled to escape it. I 
was as anxious as yourself to break the tie between us, — 
to bury the past in a fathomless grave, — ^to make it impos- 
sible that we should ever meet, until you confront me at 
the bar of Judgment! You little can imagine what steps 
I took to render all this secure; and what was the result? 
Our strange interview in the bowels of the earth con- 
vinced me of the futility of my design.” 

94 


FRAGMENTARY SENTENCES 

“Ah, fatal chance!” cried Miriam, covering her face 
with her hands. 

“Yes, your heart trembled with horror when you 
recognized me,” rejoined he; “but you did not guess that 
there was an equal horror in my own!” 

“Why would not the weight of earth above our heads 
have crumbled down upon us both, forcing us apart, but 
burying us equally.^” cried Miriam, in a burst of vehe- 
ment passion. “Oh, that we could have wandered in those 
dismal passages till we both perished, taking opposite 
paths in the darkness, so that when we lay down to die our 
last breaths might not mingle!” 

“It were vain to wish it,” said the model. “In all 
that labyrinth of midnight paths, we should have found 
one another out to live or die together. Our fates cross 
and are entangled. The threads are twisted into a strong 
cord, which is dragging us to an evil doom. Could the 
knots be severed, we might escape. But neither can your 
slender fingers untie these knots, nor my masculine force 
break them. We must submit!” 

'^‘Pray for rescue, as I have,” exclaimed Miriam. 
“Pray for deliverance from me, since I am your evil 
genius, as you mine. Dark as your life has been, I have 
known you to pray in times past!” 

At these words of Miriam, a tremor and horror appeared 
to seize upon her persecutor, insomuch that he shook and 
grew ashy pale before her eyes. In this man’s memory, 
there was something that made it awful for him to think 
of prayer ; nor would any torture be more intolerable 
than to be reminded of such divine comfort and succor 
as await pious souls merely for the asking. This torment 
was perhaps the token of a native temperament deeply 
susceptible of religious impressions, but which had been 
wronged, violated, and debased, until, at length, it was 

95 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


capable only of terror from the sources that were intended 
for our purest and loftiest consolation. He looked so 
fearfully at her^ and with such intense pain struggling in 
his eyes, that Miriam felt pity. 

And, now, all at once, it struck her that he might be 
mad. It was an idea that had never before seriously 
occurred to her mind, although, as soon as suggested, it 
fitted marvellously' into many circumstances that lay within 
her knowledge. But, alas I such was her evil fortune, that, 
whether mad or no, his power over her remained the same, 
and was likely to be used only the more tyrannously, if 
exercised by a lunatic. 

“I would not give you pain,"" she said, soothingly; 
**your faith allows you the consolations of penance and 
absolution. Try what help there may be in these and 
leave me to myself."" 

“Do not think it, Miriam,” said he; “we are bound 
together, and can never part again.” 

“Why should it seem so impossible.^’" she rejoined. 
“Think how I had escaped from all the past! I had 
made for myself a new sphere, and found new friends, 
new occupations, new hopes and enjoyments. My heart, 
methinks, was almost as unburdened as if there had been 
no miserable life behind me. The human spirit does not 
perish of a single wound, nor exhaust itself in a single 
trial of life. Let us but keep asunder, and all may go 
well for both.” 

“We fancied ourselves forever sundered,” he replied. 
“Yet we met once, in the bowels of the earth; and, were 
we to part now, our fates would fling us together again in 
a desert, on a mountain-top, or in whatever spot seemed 
safest. You speak in vain, therefore."" 

“You mistake your own will for an iron necessity,” 
said Miriam; “otherwise, you might have suffered me to 

96 


FRAGMENTARY SENTENCES 


glide past you like a ghost, when we met among those 
ghosts of ancient days. Even now you might bid me pass 
as freely.” 

‘‘Never!” said he, with unmitigable will; “your reap- 
pearance has destroyed the work of years. You know 
the power that I have over you. Obey my bidding; or, 
within a short time, it shall be exercised: nor will I cease 
to haunt you till the moment comes.” 

“Then,” said Miriam, more calmly, “I foresee the 
end, and have already warned you of it. It will be death !” 

“Your own death, Miriam, — or mine?” he asked, look- 
ing fixedly at her. 

“Do you imagine me a murderess?” said she, shuddering; 
“you, at least, have no right to think me so 1” 

“Yet,” rejoined he, with a glance of dark meaning, 
“men have said that this white hand had once a crimson 
stain.” He took her hand as he spoke, and held it in 
his own, in spite of the repugnance, amounting to nothing 
short of agony, with which she struggled to regain it. 
Holding it up to the fading light (for there was already 
dimness among the trees), he appeared to examine it 
closely, as if to discover the imaginary blood-stain with 
which he taunted her. He smiled as he let it go. “It 
looks very white,” said he; “but I have known hands as 
white, which all the water in the ocean would not have 
washed clean.” 

“It had no stain,” retorted Miriam, bitterly, “until 
you grasped it in your own.” 

The wind has blown away whatever else they may 
have spoken. 

They went together towards the town, and, on their 
way, continued to make reference, no doubt, to some 
strange and dreadful history of their former life, belong- 
ing equally to this dark man and to the fair and youthful 

97 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


woman whom he persecuted. In their words^ or in the ji 
breath that uttered them^ there seemed to be an odor of 
guilty and a scent of blood. Yet^ how can we imagine y 
that a stain of ensanguined crime should attach to Miriam! 
Or how, on the other hand, should spotless innocence be » 
subjected to a thraldom like that which she endured from ; 
the spectre, whom she herself had evoked out of the dark- • 
ness I Be this as it might, Miriam, we have reason to : 
believe, still continued to beseech him, humbly, passion- | 
ately, wildly, only to go his way, and leave her free to | 
follow her owm sad path. 

Thus they strayed onward through the green wilder- 
ness of the Borghese grounds, and soon came near the 
city wall, where, had Miriam raised her eyes, she might 
have seen Hilda and the sculptor leaning on the parapet. 
But she walked in a mist of trouble, and could distinguish 
little beyond its limits. As they came within public 
observation, her persecutor fell behind, throwing off the 
imperious manner which he had assumed during their 
solitary interview. The Porta del Popolo swarmed with 
life. The merry-makers^ who had spent the feast-day 
outside the walls, were now thronging in ; a party of 
horsemen were entering beneath the arch; a travelling- 
carriage had been drawn up just within the verge, and 
was passing through the villanous ordeal of the papal 
custom-house. In the broad piazza, too, there was a motley 
crowd. 

But the stream of Miriam’s trouble kept its way through 
this flood of human life, and neither mingled with it nor 
was turned aside. With a sad kind of feminine ingenuity, 
she found a way to kneel before her tyrant undetected, 
though in full sight of all the people, still beseeching 
him for freedom, and in vain. 


98 


CHAPTER XII 
A Stroll on the Pincian 

Hilda, after giving the last touches to the picture 
of Beatrice Cenci, had flown down from her dove-cote, 
late in the afternoon, and gone to the Pincian Hill, in 
the hope of hearing a strain or two of exhilarating music. 
There, as it happened, she met the sculptor; for, to say 
the truth, Kenyon had well noted the fair artist’s ordinary 
way of life, and was accustomed to shape his own move- 
ments, so as to bring him often within her sphere. 

The Pincian Hill is the favorite promenade of the 
Roman aristocracy. At the present day, however, like 
most other Roman possessions, it belongs less to the native 
inhabitants than to the barbarians from Gaul, Great 
Britain, and beyond the sea, who have established a peace- 
ful usurpation over whatever is enjoyable or memorable 
in the Eternal City. These foreign guests are indeed 
ungrateful, if they do not breathe a prayer for Pope 
Clement, or whatever Holy Father it may have been, 
who levelled the summit of the mount so skilfully, and 
bounded it with the parapet of the city wall; who laid 
out those broad walks and drives, and overhung them with 
the deepening shade of many kinds of tree; who scattered 
the flowers of all seasons, and of every clime, abundantly 
over those green, central lawns; who scooped out hollows, 
in fit places, and, setting great basins of marble in them, 
caused ever-gushing fountains to fill them to the brim; who 
reared up the immemorial obelisk out of the soil that 

99 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

had long hidden it; who placed pedestals along the borders 
of the avenues and crowned them with busts of that 
multitude of worthies — statesmen^ heroes^ artists,, men of 
letters and of song — whom the whole world claims as its 
chief ornaments^ though Italy produced them all. In a 
word^ the Pincian garden is one of the things that recon- 
cile the stranger (since he fully appreciates the enjoyment, 
and feels nothing of the cost) to the rule of an irresponsi- 
ble dynasty of Holy Fathers, who seem to have aimed at 
making life as agreeable an affair as it can well be. 

In this pleasant spot, the red-trousered French soldiers 
are always to be seen ; bearded and grizzled veterans, 
perhaps with medals of Algiers or the Crimea on their 
breasts. To them is assigned the peaceful duty of seeing 
that children do not trample on the flower-beds, nor any 
youthful lover rifle them of their fragrant blossoms to stick 
in the beloved one’s hair. Here sits (drooping upon some 
marble bench, in the treacherous sunshine) the consump- 
tive girl, whose friends have brought her, for cure, to a cli- 
mate that instils poison into its very purest breath. Here, 
all day, come nursery-maids, burdened with rosy English 
babies, or guiding the footsteps of little travellers from the 
far Western world. Here, in the sunny afternoons, roll and 
rumble all kinds of equipages, from the cardinal’s old-fash- 
ioned and gorgeous purple carriage to the gay barouche of 
modern date. Here horsemen gallop on thoroughbred 
steeds. Here, in short, all the transitory population of 
Rome, the world’s great watering-place, rides, drives, or 
promenades ! Here are beautiful sunsets ; and here, which- 
ever way you turn your eyes, are scenes as well worth 
gazing at, both in themselves and for their historic interest, 
as any that the sun ever rose and set upon. Here, too, on 
certain afternoons of the week, a French military band 

100 


A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN 


flings out rich music over the poor old city, floating her 
with strains as loud as those of her own echoless triumphs. 

Hilda and the sculptor (by the contrivance of the latter, 
who loved best to be alone with his young country-woman) 
had wandered beyond the throng of promenaders, whom 
they left in a dense cluster around the music. They strayed, 
indeed, to the farthest point of the Pincian Hill, and leaned 
over the parapet, looking down upon the Muro Torto, a 
massive fragment of the oldest Roman wall, which juts 
over, as if ready to tumble down by its own weight, yet 
seems still the most indestructible piece of work that men’s 
hands ever piled together. In the blue distance rose 
Soracte, and other heights, which have gleamed afar, to our 
imaginations, but look scarcely real to our bodily eyes, 
because, being dreamed about so much, they have taken the 
aerial tints which belong only to a dream. These, never- 
theless, are the solid framework of hills that shut in Rome, 
and its wide surrounding Campagna; no land of dreams, 
but the broadest page of history, crowded so full with mem- 
orable events that one obliterates another; as if Time had 
crossed and recrossed his own records till they grew 
illegible. 

But, not to meddle with history, — with which our narra- 
tive is no otherwise concerned, than that the very dust of 
Rome is historic, and inevitably settles on our page and 
mingles with our ink, — we will return to our two friends, 
who were still leaning over the wall. Beneath them lay the 
broad sweep of the Borghese grounds, covered with trees, 
amid which appeared the white gleam of pillars and statues, 
and the flash of an upspringing fountain, all to be over- 
shadowed at a later period of the year by the thicker growth 
of foliage. 

The advance of vegetation, in this softer climate, is less 
abrupt than the inhabitant of the cold North is accustomed 

101 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


to observe. Beginning earlier, — even in February, — spring 
is not compelled to burst into summer vrith such headlong 
haste; there is time to dwell upon each opening beauty, and 
to enj oy the budding leaf, the tender green, the sweet youth 
and freshness of the year; it gives us its maiden charm, 
before settling into the married Summer, which, again, does 
not so soon sober itself into matronly Autumn. In our 
own country, the virgin Spring hastens to its bridal too 
abruptly. But, here, after a month or two of kindly 
growth, the leaves of the young trees, which cover that 
portion of the Borghese grounds nearest the city wall, were 
still in their tender half -development. 

In the remoter depths, among the old groves of ilex- 
trees, Hilda and Kenyon heard the faint sound of music, 
laughter, and mingling voices. It was probably the uproar 
— spreading even so far as the walls of Rome, and grow- 
ing faded and melancholy in its passage — of that wild syl- 
van merriment, which we have already attempted to de- 
scribe. By and by, it ceased; although the two listeners 
still tried to distinguish it between the bursts of nearer music 
from the military band. But there was no renewal of that 
distant mirth. Soon afterwards, they saw a solitary figure 
advancing along one of the paths that lead from the ob- 
scurer part of the ground towards the gateway. 

“Look! is it not Donatello?” said Hilda. 

“He it is, beyond a doubt,” replied the sculptor. “But 
how gravely he walks, and with what long looks behind 
him! He seems either very weary, or very sad. I should 
not hesitate to call it sadness, if Donatello were a creature 
capable of the sin and folly of low spirits. In all these 
hundred paces, while we have been watching him, he has 
not made one of those little caprioles in the air which are 
characteristic of his natural gait. I begin to doubt whether 
he is a veritable Faun.” 


102 


A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN 

“Then/’ said Hilda, with perfect simplicity, “you have 
thought him — and do think him — one of that strange, wild, 
happy race of creatures, that used to laugh and sport in 
the woods, in the old, old times ? So do I, indeed ! But I 
never quite believed, till now, that fauns existed anywhere 
but in poetry.” 

The sculptor at first merely smiled. Then, as the idea 
took further possession of his mind, he laughed outright, 
and wished from the bottom of his heart (being in love 
with Hilda, though he had never told her so) that he could 
have rewarded or punished her for its pretty absurdity with 
a kiss. 

“O Hilda, what a treasure of sweet faith and pure imag- 
ination you hide under that little straw hat!” cried he, at 
length. “A Faun! a Faun! Great Pan is not dead, then, 
after all! The whole tribe of mythical creatures yet live 
in the moonlit seclusion of a young girl’s fancy, and 
find it a lovelier abode and play-place, I doubt not, than 
their Arcadian haunts of yore. What bliss, if a man of 
marble, like myself, could stray thither, too!” 

“Why do you laugh so.^” asked Hilda, reddening; for 
she was a little disturbed at Kenyon’s ridicule, however 
kindly expressed. “What can I have said, that you think 
so very foolish.^” 

“Well, not foolish, then,” rejoined the sculptor, “but 
wiser, it may be, than I can fathom. Really, however, the 
idea does strike one as delightfully fresh, when we con- 
sider Donatello’s position and external environment. Why, 
ray dear Hilda, he is a Tuscan born, of an old noble race 
in that part of Italy ; and he has a moss-grown tower among 
the Apennines, where he and his forefathers have dwelt, 
under their own vines and fig-trees, from an unknown an- 
tiquity. His boyish passion for Miriam has introduced 
him familiarly to our little circle; and our republican and 

103 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

artistic simplicity of intercourse has included this young 
Italian^ on the same terms as one of ourselves. But^ if we 
paid due respect to rank and title, we should bend rever- 
entially to Donatello, and salute him as his Excellency the 
Count di Monte Beni,” 

“That is a droll idea, — much droller than his being a 
Faun !” said Hilda, laughing in her turn. “This does not 
quite satisfy me, however, especially as you yourself recog- 
nized and acknowledged his wonderful resemblance to the 
statue.” 

“Except as regards the pointed ears,” said Kenyon; 
adding, aside, “and one other little peculiarity generally 
observable in the statues of fauns.” 

“As for his Excellency the Count di Monte Beni’s ears,” 
replied Hilda, smiling again at the dignity with which this 
title invested their playful friend, “you know we could 
never see their shape, on account of his clustering curls. 
Nay, I remember, he once started back, as shyly as a wild 
deer, when Miriam made a pretense of examining them. 
How do you explain that.^” 

“Oh, I certainly shall not contend against such a weight 
of evidence; the fact of his faunship being otherwise so 
probable,” answered the sculptor, still hardly retaining his 
gravity. “Faun or not, Donatello — or the Count di Monte Beni 
— is a singularly wild creature, and, as I have remarked 
on other occasions, though very gentle, does not love to 
be touched. Speaking in no harsh sense, there is a great 
deal of animal nature in him, as if he had been born in the 
woods, and had run wild all his childhood, and were as 
yet but imperfectly domesticated. Life, even in our day, 
is very simple and unsophisticated in some of the shaggy 
nooks of the Apennines.” 

“It annoys me very much,” said Hilda, “this inclination, 
which most people have, to explain away the wonder and 

104 


A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN 

the mystery out of everything. Why could not you allow 
me — and yourself, too — the satisfaction of thinking him a 
Faun.^” 

“Pray keep your belief, dear Hilda, if .it makes you 
any happier,” said the sculptor; “and I shall do my best 
to become a convert. Donatello has asked me to spend the 
summer with him, in his ancestral tower, where I purpose 
investigating the pedigree of these sylvan counts, his fore- 
fathers; and if their shadows beckon me into dreamland, 
I shall willingly follow. By the by, speaking of Donatello, 
there is a point on which I should like to be enlightened.” 

“Can I help you, then.^” said Hilda, in answer to his 
look. 

“Is there the slightest chance of his winning Miriam’s 
affections?” suggested Kenyon. 

“Miriam! she, so accomplished and gifted!” exclaimed 
Hilda; “and he, a rude, uncultivated boy! No, no, no!” 

“It would seem impossible,” said the sculptor. “But, 
on the other hand, a gifted woman flings away her affec- 
tions so unaccountably, sometimes ! Miriam, of late, has 
been very morbid and miserable, as we both know. Young 
as she is, the morning light seems already to have faded 
out of her life; and now comes Donatello, with natural 
sunshine enough for himself and her, and offers her the 
opportunity of making her heart and life all new and 
cheery again. People of high intellectual endowments do 
not require similar ones in those they love. They are just 
the persons to appreciate the wholesome gush of natural 
feeling, the honest affection, the simple joy, the fulness 
of contentment with what he loves, which Miriam sees in 
Donatello. True; she may call him a simpleton. It is a 
necessity of the case; for a man loses the capacity for 
this kind of affection, in proportion as he cultivates and 
refines himself.” 


105 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


“Dear me!” said Hilda,, drawing imperceptibly away 
from her companion. “Is this the penalty of refinement.^ 
Pardon me; I do not believe it. It is because you are a 
sculptor, that you think nothing can be finely wrought 
except it be cold and hard, like the marble in which your 
ideas take shape. I am a painter, and know that the most 
delicate beauty may be softened and warmed throughout.” 

“I said a foolish thing, indeed,” answered the sculptor. 
“It surprises me, for I might have drawn a wiser knowledge 
out of my own experience. It is the surest test of genuine 
love, that it brings back our early simplicity to the world- 
liest of us.” 

Thus talking, they loitered slowly along beside the 
parapet which borders the level summit of the Pincian 
with its irregular sweep. At intervals they looked through 
the lattice-work of their thoughts at the varied prospects 
that lay before and beneath them. 

From the terrace where they now stood there is an 
abrupt descent towards the Piazza del Popolo; and looking 
down into its broad space they beheld the tall palatial 
edifices, the church-domes, and the ornamented gateway, 
which grew and were consolidated out of the thought of 
Michael Angelo. They saw, too, the red granite obelisk, 
oldest of things, even in Rome, which rises in the centre 
of the piazza, with a fourfold fountain at its base. All 
Roman works and ruins (whether of the empire, the far-off 
republic, or the still more distant kings) assume a transient, 
visionary, and impalpable character when we think that 
this indestructible monument supplied one of the recollec- 
tions which Moses and the Israelites bore from Egypt 
into the desert. Perchance, on beholding the cloudy pillar 
and the fiery column, they whispered awe-stricken to one 
another, “In its shape it is like that old obelisk which we 
and our fathers have so often seen on the borders of the 

106 


A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN 


Nile/' And now that very obelisk^ with hardly a trace 
of decay upon it^ is the first thing that the modern traveller 
sees after entering the Flaminian Gate ! 

Lifting their eyes, Hilda and her companion gazed 
westward, and saw beyond the invisible Tiber the Castle 
of St. Angelo; that immense tomb of a pagan emperor, 
with the archangel at its summit. 

Still farther off appeared a mighty pile of buildings, 
surmounted by the vast dome, which all of us have shaped 
and swelled outward, like a huge bubble, to the utmost 
scope of our imaginations, long before we see it floating 
over the worship of the city. It may be most worthily 
seen from precisely the point where our two friends were 
now standing. At any nearer view the grandeur of 
St. Peter’s hides itself behind the immensity of its separate 
parts, so that we see only the front, only the sides, only 
the pillared length and loftiness of the portico, and not 
the mighty whole. But at this distance the entire outline 
of the world’s cathedral, as well as that of the palace of 
the world’s chief priest, is taken in at once. In such 
remoteness, moreover, the imagination is not debarred from 
lending its assistance, even w^hile we have the reality 
before our eyes, and helping the weakness of human sense 
to do justice to so grand an object. It requires both faith 
and fancy to enable us to feel, what is nevertheless so true, 
that yonder, in front of the purple outline of hills, is the 
grandest ediflce ever built by man, painted against God’s 
loveliest sky. 

After contemplating a little while a scene which their 
long residence in Rome had made familiar to them, Kenyon 
and Hilda again let their glances fall into the piazza at 
their feet. They there beheld Miriam, who had just 
entered the Porta del Popolo, and was standing by the 
obelisk and fountain. With a gesture that impressed 

107 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


Kenyon as at once suppliant and imperious^ she seemed 
to intimate to a figure which had attended her thus far, 
that it was now her desire to be left alone. The pertina- 
cious model, however, remained immovable. 

And the sculptor here noted a circumstance, which, 
according to the interpretation he might put upon it, was 
either too trivial to be mentioned, or else so mysteriously 
significant that he found it difficult to believe his eyes. 
Miriam knelt down on the steps of the fountain; so far 
there could be no question of the fact. To other observers, 
if any there were, she probably appeared to take this 
attitude merely for the convenience of dipping her fingers 
into the gush of water from the mouth of one of the stone 
lions. But as she clasped her hands together after thus 
bathing them, and glanced upw^ard at the model, an idea 
took strong possession of Kenyon’s mind that Miriam was 
kneeling to this dark follower there in the world’s face! 

“Do you see it?” he said to Hilda. 

“See what?” asked she, surprised at the emotion of his 
tone. “I see Miriam, who has just bathed her hands in 
that delightfully cool water. I often dip my fingers into 
a Roman fountain, and think of the brook that used to be 
one of my playmates in my New England village.” 

“I fancied I saw something else,” said Kenyon; “but 
it was doubtless a mistake.” 

But, allowing that he had caught a true glimpse into 
the hidden significance of Miriam’s gesture, what a terrible 
thraldom did it suggest! Free as she seemed to be, — 
beggar as he looked, — ^the nameless vagrant must then 
be dragging the beautiful Miriam through the streets of 
Rome, fettered and shackled more cruelly than any captive 
queen of yore following in an emperor’s triumph. And 
was it conceivable that she would have been thus enthralled 
unless some great error — how great Kenyon dared not 

108 


A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN 

think — or some fatal weakness had given this dark adver- 
sary a vantage-ground ? 

“Hilda/’ said he, abruptly, “who and what is Miriam? 
Pardon me; but are you sure of her?” 

“Sure of her !” repeated Hilda, with an angry blush, 
for her friend’s sake. “I am sure that she is kind, good, 
and generous; a true and faithful friend, whom I love 
dearly, and who loves me as well! What more than this 
need I be sure of?” 

“And your delicate instincts say all this in her favor? — 
nothing against her?” continued the sculptor, without heed- 
ing the irritation of Hilda’s tone. “These are my own 
impressions, too. But she is such a mystery! We do not 
even know whether she is a countrywoman of ours, or an 
Englishwoman, or a German. There is Anglo-Saxon blood 
in her veins, one would say, and a right English accent 
on her tongue, but much that is not English breeding, nor 
American. Nowhere else but in Rome, and as an artist, 
could she hold a place in society without giving some 
clew to her past life.” 

“I love her dearly,” said Hilda, still with displeasure 
in her tone, “and trust her most entirely.” 

“My heart trusts her at least, whatever my head may 
do,” replied Kenyon; “and Rome is not like one of our 
New En^and villages, where we need the permission of 
each individual neighbor for every act that we do, every 
word that we utter, and every friend that we make or 
keep. In these particulars the papal despotism allows us 
freer breath than our native air; and if we like to take 
generous views of our associates, we can do so, to a reason- 
able extent, without ruining ourselves.” 

“The music has ceased,” said Hilda; “I am going now.” 

There are three streets that, beginning close beside each 
other, diverge from the Piazza del Popolo towards the heart 

109 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

of Rome; on the left^ the Via del Babuino; on the rights 
the Via della Ripetta; and between these two that world- 
famous avenue, the Corso. It appeared that Miriam and 
her strange companion were passing up the first-mentioned 
of these three, and were soon hidden from Hilda and the 
sculptor. 

The two latter left the Pincian by the broad and stately 
walk that skirts along its brow. Beneath them, from the 
base of the abrupt descent, the city spread wide away in 
a close contiguity of red-earthen roofs, above which rose 
eminent the domes of a hundred churches, beside here and 
there a tower, and the upper windows of some taller or 
higher situated palace, looking down on a multitude of 
palatial abodes. At a distance, ascending out of the central 
mass of edifices, they could see the top of the Antonine 
column, and near it the circular roof of the Pantheon 
looking heavenward with its ever-open eye. 

Except these two objects, almost everything that they 
beheld was mediaoval, though built, indeed, of the massive 
old stones and indestructible bricks of imperial Rome; for 
the ruins of the Coliseum, the Golden House, and innumer- 
able temples of Roman, gods, and mansions of Caesars and 
senators, had supplied the material for all those gigantic 
hovels, and their walls were cemented with mortar of 
inestimable cost, being made of precious antique statues, 
burnt long ago for this petty purpose. 

Rome, as it now exists, has grown up under the Popes, 
and seems like nothing but a heap of broken rubbish, 
thrown into the great chasm between our owu days and 
the Empire, merely to fill it up; and, for the better part 
of two thousand years, its annals of obscure policies, and 
wars, and continually recurring misfortunes, seem also 
but broken rubbish, as compared with its classic history. 

If we consider the present city as at aU connected with 
110 


A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN 

the famous one of old^ it is only because we find it built 
over its grave. A depth of thirty feet of soil has covered 
up the Rome of ancient days^, so that it lies like the dead 
corpse of a giant^ decaying for centuries^ with no survivor 
mighty enough even to bury it^ until the dust of all those 
years has gathered slowly over its recumbent form and 
made a casual sepulchre. 

We know not how to characterize^ in any accordant and 
compatible terms^ the Rome that lies before us; its sunless 
alleys^ and streets of palaces; its churches^ lined with the 
gorgeous marbles that were originally polished for the 
adornment of pagan temples; its thousands of evil smells, 
mixed up with fragrance of rich incense, diffused from as 
many censers; its little life, deriving feeble nutriment 
from what has long been dead. Everywhere, some frag- 
ment of ruin suggesting the magnificence of a former 
epoch; everywhere, moreover, a cross, — and nastiness at 
the foot of it. As the sum of all, there are recollections 
that kindle the soul, and a gloom and languor that depress 
it beyond an}’’ depth of melancholic sentiment that can 
be elsewhere known. 

Yet how is it possible to say an unkind or irreverential 
word of Rome.^ The city of all time, and of all the 
world! The spot for which man’s great life and deeds have 
done so much, and for which decay has done whatever 
glory and dominion could not do! At this moment, the 
evening sunshine is flinging its golden mantle over it, 
making all that we thought mean magnificent; the bells of 
all the churches suddenly ring out, as if it were a peal of 
triumph because Rome is still imperial. 

*T sometimes fancy,” said Hilda, on whose susceptibility 
the scene always made a strong impression, “that Rome — 
mere Rome — ^will crowd everything else out of my heart.” 

“Heaven forbid!” ejaculated the sculptor. 

Ill 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


They had now reached the grand stairs that ascend 
from the Piazza di Spagna to the hither brow of the 
Pincian Hill. Old Beppo^ the millionnaire of his ragged 
fraternity, — it is a wonder that no artist paints him as 
the cripple whom St. Peter heals at the Beautiful Gate 
of the Temple, — ^was just mounting his donkey to depart, 
laden with the rich spoil of the day’s beggary. 

Up the stairs, drawing his tattered cloak about his face, 
came the model, at whom Beppo looked askance, jealous 
of an encroacher on his rightful domain. The figure 
passed away, however, up the Via Sistina. In the piazza 
below, near the foot of the magnificent steps, stood Miriam, 
with her eyes bent on the ground, as if she were counting 
those little, square, uncomfortable paving-stones, that make 
it a penitential pilgrimage to walk in Rome. She kept 
this attitude for several minutes, and when, at last, the 
importunities of a beggar disturbed her from it, she seemed 
bewildered and pressed her hand upon her brow. 

“She has been in some sad dream or other, poor thing!” 
said Kenyon, syrapathizingly ; “and even now, she is im- 
prisoned there in a kind of cage, the iron bars of which are 
made of her own thoughts.” 

“I fear she is not well,” said Hilda. “I am going down 
the stairs, and will join Miriam.” 

“Farewell, then,” said the sculptor. “Dear Hilda, this 
is a perplexed and troubled world! It soothes me inex- 
pressibly to think of you in your tower, with white doves 
and white thoughts for your companions, so high above us 
all, and with the Virgin for your household friend. You 
know not how far it throws its light, that lamp which you 
keep burning at her shrine! I passed beneath the tower 
last night, and the ray cheered me, — because you lighted 
it.” 


112 


A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN 


‘*It has for me a religious significance,” replied Hilda, 
quietly, “and yet I am no Catholic.” 

They parted, and Kenyon made haste along the Via 
Sistina, in the hope of overtaking the model, whose haunts 
and character he was anxious to investigate, for Miriam’s 
sake. He fancied that he saw him a long way in advance, 
but before he reached the Fountain of the Triton, the 
dusky figure had vanished. 


113 


CHAPTER XIII 
A Sculptor's Studio 

About this period^ Miriam seems to have been goaded 
by a weary restlessness that drove her abroad on any 
errand or none. She went one morning to visit Kenyon 
in his studio, whither he had invited her to see a new 
statue, on which he had staked many hopes, and which 
was now almost completed in the clay. Next to Hilda, 
the person for whom Miriam felt most affection and confi- 
dence was Kenyon; and in all the difficulties that beset her 
life, it was her impulse to draw near Hilda for feminine 
sympathy, and the sculptor for brotherly counsel. 

Yet it was to little purpose that she approached the 
edge of the voiceless gulf between herself and them. Stand- 
ing on the utmost verge of that dark chasm, she might 
stretch out her hand and never clasp a hand of theirs; 
she might strive to call out, “Help, friends! help!” but, 
as with dreamers when they shout, her voice would perish 
inaudibly in the remoteness that seemed such a little way. 
This perception of an infinite, shivering solitude, amid 
which we cannot come close enough to human beings to be 
warmed by them, and where they turn to cold, chilly shapes 
of mist, is one of the most forlorn results of any accident, 
misfortune, crime, or peculiarity of character, that puts 
an individual ajar with the world. Very often, as in 
Miriam’s case, there is an insatiable instinct that demands 
friendship, love, and intimate communion, but is forced 

114 


A SCULPTOR’S STUDIO 

to pine in empty forms; a hunger of the hearty which finds 
only shadows to feed upon. 

Kenyon’s studio was in a cross-street, or, rather, an ugly 
and dirty little lane, between the Corso and the Via della 
Ripetta; and though chill, narrow, gloomy, and bordered 
with tall and shabby structures, the lane was not a whit 
more disagreeable than nine tenths of the Roman streets. 
Over the door of one of the houses was a marble tablet, 
bearing an inscription, to the purport that the sculpture- 
rooms within had formerly been occupied by the illustrious 
artist Canova. In these precincts (which Canova’s genius 
was not quite of a character to render sacred, though it 
certainly made them interesting) the young American 
sculptor had now established himself. 

The studio of a sculptor is generally but a rough and 
dreary-looking place, with a good deal the aspect, indeed, 
of a stone-mason’s workshop. Bare floors of brick or 
plank, and plastered walls; an old chair or two, or perhaps 
only a block of marble (containing, however, the possi- 
bility of ideal grace within it) to sit down upon; some 
hastily scrawled sketches of nude figures on the whitewash 
of the wall. These last are probably the sculptor’s earliest 
glimpses of ideas that may hereafter be solidified into 
imperishable stone, or perhaps may remain as impalpable 
as a dream. Next there are a few very roughly modelled 
little figures in clay or plaster, exhibiting the second stage 
of the idea as it advances towards a marble immortality; 
and then is seen the exquisitely designed shape of clay, 
more interesting than even the final marble, as being the 
intimate production of the sculptor himself, moulded 
throughout with his loving hands, and nearest to his 
imagination and heart. In the plaster-cast, from this clay 
model, the beauty of the statue strangely disappears, to 
shine forth again with pure white radiance, in the precious 

115 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


marble of Carrara. Works in all these stages of advance- 
ment^ and some with the final touch upon them^ might be 
found in Kenyon's studio. 

Here might be witnessed the process of actually 
chiselling the marble^ with which (as it is not quite satis- 
factory to think) a sculptor in these days has very little 
to do. In Italy, there is a class of men whose merely 
mechanical skill is perhaps more exquisite than was pos- 
sessed by the ancient artificers, who wrought out the designs 
of Praxiteles; or, very possibly, by Praxiteles himself. 
Whatever of illusive representation can be effected in 
marble, they are capable of achieving, if the object be 
before their eyes. The sculptor has but to present these 
men with a plaster-cast of his design, and a sufficient block 
of marble, and tell them that the figure is imbedded in the 
stone, and must be freed from its encumbering superflu- 
ities ; and, in due time, without the necessity of his touching 
the work with his own finger, he will see before him the 
statue that is to make him renowned. His creative power 
has wrought it with a word. 

In no other art, surely, does genius find such effective 
instruments, and so happily relieve itself of the drudgery 
of actual performance; doing wonderfully nice things by 
the hands of other people, when it may be suspected they 
could not always be done by the sculptor's own. And how 
much of the admiration which our artists get for their 
buttons and button-holes, their shoe-ties, their neck-cloths, 
— and these, at our present epoch of taste, make a large 
share of the renown, — ^would be abated, if we were gener- 
ally aware that the sculptor can claim no credit for such 
pretty performances, as immortalized in marble! They 
are not his work, but that of some nameless machine in 
human shape. 

Miriam stopped an instant in an antechamber, to look 
116 


A SCULPTOR’S STUDIO 


at a half -finished bust, the features of which seemed to be 
struggling out of the stone; and, as it were, scattering and 
dissolving its hard substance by the glow of feeling and 
intelligence. As the skilful workman gave stroke after 
stroke of the chisel with apparent carelessness, but sure 
effect, it was impossible not to think that the outer marble 
was merely an extraneous environment; the human counte- 
nance within its embrace must have existed there since the 
limestone ledges of Carrara were first made. Another 
bust was nearly completed, though still one of Kenyon’s 
most trustworthy assistants was at work, giving delicate 
touches, shaving off an impalpable something, and leaving 
little heaps of marble-dust to attest it. 

“As these busts in the block of marble,” thought Miriam, 
“so does our individual fate exist in the limestone of time. 
We fancy that we carve it out; but its ultimate shape is 
prior to all our action.” 

Kenyon was in the inner room, but, hearing a step in 
the antechamber, he threw a veil over what he was at work 
upon, and came out to receive his visitor. He was dressed 
in a gray blouse, with a little cap on the top of his head; 
a costume which became him better than the formal gar- 
ments which he wore, whenever he passed out of his own 
domains. The sculptor had a face which, when time had 
done a little more for it, would offer a worthy subject for 
as good an artist as himself : features finely cut, as if 
already marble; an ideal forehead, deeply set eyes, and a 
mouth much hidden in a light-brown beard, but apparently 
sensitive and delicate. 

“I will not offer you my hand,” said he; “it is grimy 
with Cleopatra’s clay.” 

“No; I will not touch clay; it is earthy and human,” 
answered Miriam. “I have come to try whether there is 
any calm and coolness among your marbles. My own art 

117 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


is too nervous^ too passionate, too full of agitation, for me 
to work at it whole days together, without intervals of 
repose. So, what have you to show me?” 

“Pray look at everything here,” said Kenyon. “I love 
to have painters see my work. Their judgment is unpreju- 
diced, and more valuable than that of the world generally, 
from the light which their own art throws on mine. More 
valuable, too, than that of my brother sculptors, who never 
judge me fairly, — nor I them, perhaps.” 

To gratify him, Miriam looked round at the specimens 
in marble or plaster, of which there were several in the 
room, comprising originals or casts of most of the designs 
that Kenyon had thus far produced. He was still too 
young to have accumulated a large gallery of such things. 
What he had to show were chiefly the attempts and experi- 
ments, in various directions, of a beginner in art, acting 
as a stern tutor to himself, and profiting more by his 
failures than by any successes of which he was yet capable. 
Some of them, however, had great merit; and in the pure, 
fine glow of the new marble, it may be, they dazzled the 
judgment into awarding them higher praise than they de- 
served. Miriam admired the statue of a beautiful youth, 
a pearl-fisher, who had got entangled in the weeds at the 
bottom of the sea, and lay dead among the p2arl-oysters, 
the rich shells, and the sea-weeds, all of like value to him 
now. 

“The poor young man has perished among the prizes that 
he sought,” remarked she. “But what a strange efficacy 
there is in death! If we cannot all win pearls, it causes 
an empty shell to satisfy us just as well. I like this statue, 
though it is too cold and stern in its moral lesson; and, 
physically, the form has not settled itself into sufficient re- 
pose.” 


118 


A SCULPTOR’S STUDIO 


In another style, there was a grand, calm head of Mil- 
ton, not copied from any one bust or picture, yet more 
authentic than any of them, because all known representa- 
tions of the poet had been profoundly studied, and solved 
in the artist’s mind. The bust over the tomb in Grey 
Friars Church, the original miniatures and pictures, wher- 
ever to be found, had mingled each its special truth in 
this one work; wherein, likewise, by long persual and deep 
love of the “Paradise Lost,” the “Comus,” the “Lycidas,” 
and “L’ Allegro,” the sculptor had succeeded, even better 
than he knew, in spiritualizing his marble with the poet’s 
mighty genius. And this was a great thing to have 
achieved, such a length of time after the dry bones and 
dust of Milton were like those of any other dead man. 

There were also several portrait-busts, comprising those 
of two or three of the illustrious men of our own country, 
whom Kenyon, before he left America, had asked permis- 
sion to model. He had done so, because he sincerely be- 
lieved that, whether he wrought the busts in marble or 
bronze, the one would corrode and the other crumble in 
the long lapse of time, beneath these great men’s immor- 
tality. Possibly, however, the young artist may have under- 
estimated the durability of his material. Other faces there 
were, too, of men who (if the brevity of their remem- 
brance, after death, can be augured from their little value 
in life) should have been represented in snow rather than 
marble. Posterity will be puzzled what to do with busts 
like these, the concretions and petrifactions of a vain self- 
estimate; but will find, no doubt, that they serve to build 
into stone-walls, or burn into quick-lime, as well as if the 
marble had never been blocked into the guise of human 
heads. 

But it is an awful thing, indeed, this endless endurance, 
this almost indestructibility, of a marble bust! Whether 

119 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


in our own case^ or that of other men^ it bids us sadly 
measure the little^ little time during which our lineaments 
are likely to be of interest to any human being. It is 
especially singular that Americans should care about per- 
petuating themselves in this mode. The brief duration of 
our families^ as a hereditary household, renders it next to 
a certainty that the great-grandchildren will not know 
their father’s grandfather, and that half a century hence 
at furthest, the hammer of the auctioneer will thump its 
knock-down blow against his blockhead, sold at so much 
for the pound of stone! And it ought to make us shiver, 
the idea of leaving our features to be a dusty-white ghost 
among strangers of another generation, who will take our 
nose between their thumb and fingers (as we have seen men 
do by Caesar’s), and infallibly break it off if they can do 
so without detection! 

“Yes,” said Miriam, who had been revolving some such 
thoughts as the above, “it is a good state of mind for 
mortal man, when he is content to leave no more definite 
memorial than the grass, which will sprout kindly and 
speedily over his grave, if we do not make the spot barren 
with marble. Methinks, too, it will be a fresher and better 
world, when it flings off this great burden of stony memo- 
ries, which the ages have deemed it a piety to heap upon its 
back.” 

“What you say,” remarked Kenyon, “goes against my 
whole art. Sculpture, and the delight which men naturally 
take in it, appear to me a proof that it is good to work with 
all time before our view.” 

“Well, well,” answered Miriam, “I must not quarrel 
with you for flinging your heavy stones at poor Posterity; 
and, to say the truth, I think you are as likely to hit the 
mark as anybody. These busts, now, much as I seem to 
scorn them, make me feel as if you were a magician. You 

120 


A SCULPTOR’S STUDIO 


turn feverish men into cool^ quiet marble. What a blessed 
change for them! Would you could do as much for me!” 

“Oh, gladly!” cried Kenyon, who had long wished to 
model that beautiful and most expressive face. “When 
will jmu begin to sit.^” 

“Poh! that was not what I meant,” said Miriam. “Come, 
show me something else.” 

“Do you recognize this.^” asked the sculptor. 

He took out of his desk a little old-fashioned ivory cof- 
fer, yellow with age; it was richly carved with antique 
figures and foliage; and had Kenyon thought fit to say 
that Benvenuto Cellini wrought this precious box, the skill 
and elaborate fancy of the work would by no means have 
discredited his word, nor the old artist’s fame. At least, 
it was evidently a production of Benvenuto’s school and 
century, and might once have been the jewel-case of some 
grand lady at the court of the De’ Medici. 

Lifting the lid, however, no blaze of diamonds was dis- 
closed, but only, lapped in fleecy cotton, a small, beautifully 
shaped hand, most delicately sculptured in marble. Such 
loving care and nicest art had been lavished here, that the 
palm really seemed to have a tenderness in its very sub- 
stance. Touching those lovely fingers, — had the jealous 
sculptor allowed you to touch, — you could hardly believe 
that a virgin warmth would not steal from them into your 
heart. 

“Ah, this is very beautiful!” exclaimed Miriam, with a 
genial smile. “It is as good in its way as Loulie s hand 
Muth its baby-dimples, which Powers showed me at Flor- 
ence, evidently valuing it as much as if he had wrought 
it out of a piece of his great heart. As good as Harriet 
Hosmer’s clasped hands of Browning and his wife, sym- 
bolizing the individuality and heroic union of two high, 
poetic lives! Nay, I do not question that it is better than 

121 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


either of those^ because you must have wrought it passion- 
ately, in spite of its maiden palm and dainty finger-tips.” 

“Then you do recognize it.^” asked Kenyon. 

“There is but one right hand on earth that could have 
supplied the model,” answered Miriam; “so small and 
slender, so perfectly symmetrical, and yet with a charac- 
ter of delicate energy. I have watched it a hundred times 
at its work; but I did not dream that you had won Hilda 
so far! How have you persuaded that shy maiden to let 
you take her hand in marble.^” 

“Never! She never knew it!” hastily replied Kenyon, 
anxious to vindicate his mistress’s maidenly reserve. “I 
stole it from her. The hand is a reminiscence. After gaz- 
ing at it so often, and even holding it once for an instant, 
when Hilda was not thinking of me, I should be a bungler 
indeed, if I could not now reproduce it to something like the 
life.” 

“May you win the original one day!” said Miriam, 
kindly. 

“I have little ground to hope it,” answered the sculptor, 
despondingly : “Hilda does not dwell in our mortal atmos- 
phere; and gentle and soft as she appears, it will be as 
difficult to win her heart as to entice down a white bird 
from its sunny freedom in the sky. It is strange, with all 
her delicacy and fragility, the impression she makes of 
being utterly sufficient to herself. No; I shall never win 
her. She is abundantly capable of sympathy, and delights 
to receive it, but she has no need of love.” 

“I partly agree with you,” said Miriam. “It is a mis- 
taken idea, which men generally entertain, that nature 
has made women especially prone to throw their whole be- 
ing into what is technically called love. We have, to say 
the least, no more necessity for it than yourselves; only we 
have nothing else to do with our hearts. When women have 

122 


A SCULPTOR’S STUDIO 


other objects in life^ they are not apt to fall in love. I 
can think of many women distinguished in art^ literature, 
and science, — and multitudes whose hearts and minds find 
good employment in less ostentatious ways, — who lead 
high, lonely lives, and are conscious of no sacrifice so far as 
your sex is concerned.” 

“And Hilda will be one of these!” said Kenyon, sadly; 
“the thought makes me shiver for myself, and — and for 
her, too.” 

“Well,” said Miriam, smiling, “perhaps she may sprain 
the delicate wrist which you have sculptured to such per- 
fection. In that case you may hope. These old masters 
to whom she has vowed herself, and whom her slender hand 
and woman’s heart serve so faithfully, are your only 
rivals.” 

The sculptor sighed as he put away the treasure of 
Hilda’s marble hand into the ivory coffer, and thought 
how slight was the possibility that he should ever feel 
responsive to his own the tender clasp of the original. 
He dared not even kiss the image that he himself had 
made: it had assumed its share of Hilda’s remote and 
shy divinity. 

“And now,” said Miriam, “show me the new statue 
which you asked me hither to see.” 


123 


CHAPTER XIY 


Cleopatra 

**My new statue!’" said Kenyon, who had positively 
forgotten it in the thought of Hilda; “here it is, un- 
der this veil.” 

• “Not a nude figure, I hope,” observed Miriam. “Every 
young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world 
some specimen of indecorous womanhood,’ and call it Eve, 
Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a 
lack of decent clothing. I am weary, even more than 
I am ashamed, of seeing such things. Nowadays people 
are as good as born in their clothes, and there is prac- 
tically not a nude human being in existence. An artist, 
therefore, as you must candidly confess, cannot sculpture 
nudity with a pure heart, if only because he is compelled 
to steal guilty glimpses at hired models. The marble 
inevitably loses its chastity under such circumstances. An 
old Greek sculptor, no doubt, found his models in the 
open sunshine, and among pure and princely maidens, 
and thus the nude statues of antiquity are as modest 
as violets, and sufficiently draped in their own beauty. 
But as for Mr. Gibson’s colored Venuses (stained, I 
believe, with tobacco- juice), and all other nudities of 
to-day, I really do not understand what they have to 
say to this generation, and would be glad to see as many 
heaps of quicklime in their stead.” 

“You are severe upon the professors of my art,” said 
Kenyon, half smiling, half seriously; “not that you 

124 


are 


CLEOPATRA 


wholly wrong, either. We are bound to accept drapery 
of some kind, and make the best of it. But what are we 
to do? Must we adopt the costume of to-day, and carve, 
for example, a Venus in a hoop-petticoat?” 

“That would be a bowlder, indeed!” rejoined Miriam, 
laughing. “But the difficulty goes to confirm me in my 
belief that, except for portrait-busts, sculpture has no 
longer a right to claim any place among living arts. It 
has wrought itself out, and come fairly to an end. There 
is never a new group nowadays; never even so much as a 
new attitude. Greenough (I take my examples among men 
of merit) imagined nothing new; nor Crawford either, 
except in the tailoring line. There are not, as you will 
own, more than half a dozen positively original statues 
or groups in the world, and these few are of immemorial 
antiquity. A person familiar with the Vatican, the Uffizzi 
Gallery, the Naples Gallery, and the Louvre, will at once 
refer any modern production to its antique prototype; 
which, moreover, had begun to get out of fashion, even in 
old Roman days.” 

“Pray stop, Miriam,” cried Kenyon, “or I shall fling 
away the chisel forever!” 

“Fairly own to me, then, my friend,” rejoined Mir- 
iam, whose disturbed mind found a certain relief in this 
declamation, “that you sculptors are, of necessity, the 
greatest plagiarists in the world.” 

“I do not own it,” said Kenyon, “yet cannot utterly 
contradict you, as regards the actual state of the art. 
But as long as the Carrara quarries still yield pure blocks, 
and while my own country has marble mountains, probably 
as fine in quality, I shall steadfastly believe that future 
sculptors will revive this noblest of the beautiful arts, 
and people the world with new shapes of delicate grace 
and massive grandeur. Perhaps,” he added, smiling, 

125 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


“mankind will consent to wear a more manageable costume; 
or, at worst, we sculptors shall get the skill to make 
broadcloth transparent, and render a majestic human char- 
acter visible through the coats and trousers of the present 
day.” 

“Be it so!” said Miriam; “you are past my counsel. 
Show me the veiled figure, which I am afraid, I have criti- 
cised beforehand. To make amends, I am in the mood to 
praise it now.” 

But, as Kenyon was about to take the cloth off the 
clay model, she laid her hand on his arm. 

“Tell me first what is the subject,” said she, “for I 
have sometimes incurred great displeasure from mem- 
bers of your brotherhood by being too obtuse to puzzle 
out the purport of their productions. It is so difficult, 
you know, to compress and define a character or story, 
and make it patent at a glance, within the narrow scope 
attainable by sculpture! Indeed I fancy it is still the 
ordinary habit with sculptors, first to finish their group 
of statuary, — in such development as the particular block 
of marble will allow, — and then to choose the subject; 
as John of Bologna did with his ‘Rape of the Sabines.’ 
Have you followed that good example?” 

“No; my statue is intended for Cleopatra,” replied 
Kenyon, a little disturbed by Miriam’s raillery. “The 
special epoch of her history you must make out for your- 
self.” 

He drew away the cloth that had served to keep the 
moisture of the clay model from being exhaled. The 
sitting figure of a woman was seen. She was draped 
from head to foot in a costume minutely and scrupu- 
lously studied from that of ancient Egypt, as revealed 
by the strange sculpture of that country, its coins, draw- 
ings, painted mummy-cases, and whatever other tokens 

126 


CLEOPATRA 


have been dug out of its pyramids, graves, and cata- 
combs. Even the stiff Egyptian head-dress was adhered 
to, but had been softened into a rich feminine adornment, 
without losing a particle of its truth. Difficulties that 
might well have seemed insurmountable had been courage- 
ously encountered and made flexible to purposes of grace 
and dignity; so that Cleopatra sat attired in a garb proper 
to her historic and queenly state, as a daughter of the 
Ptolemies, and yet such as the beautiful woman would 
have put on as best adapted to heighten the magnificence 
of her charms, and kindle a tropic fire in the cold eyes of 
Octavius. 

A marvellous repose — that rare merit in statuary, ex- 
cept it be the lumpish repose native to the block of stone 
— was diffused throughout the figure. The spectator felt 
that Cleopatra had sunk down out of the fever and tur- 
moil of her life, and for one instant — as it were, between 
two pulse-throbs — had relinquished all activity, and was 
resting throughout every vein and muscle. It was the 
repose of despair, indeed; for Octavius had seen her, and 
remained insensible to her enchantments. But still there 
was a great smouldering furnace deep down in the woman’s 
heart. The repose, no doubt, was as complete as if she 
were never to stir hand or foot again; and yet, such was 
the creature’s latent energy and fierceness, she might spring 
upon you like a tigress, and stop the very breath that you 
were now drawing midway in your throat. 

The face was a miraculous success. The sculptor had 
not shunned to give the full Nubian Tips, and other 
characteristics of the Egyptian physiognomy. His courage 
and integrity had been abundantly rewarded; for Cleo- 
patra’s beauty shone out richer, warmer, more triumphant- 
ly beyond comparison, than if, shrinking timidly from the 
truth, he had chosen the tame Grecian type. The ex- 

127 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


pression was of profound^ gloomy, heavily revolving 
thought; a glance into her past life and present emer- 
gencies, while her spirit gathered itself up for some new i 
struggle, or was getting sternly reconciled to impending ; 
doom. In one view, there was a certain softness and ten- i 
derness, — ^how breathed into the statue, among so many j 
strong and passionate elements, it is impossible to say. j 
Catching another glimpse, you beheld her as implacable | 
as a stone and cruel as fire. , 

In a word, all Cleopatra — fierce, voluptuous, passionate, I 
tender, wicked, terrible, and full of poisonous and raptur- 
ous enchantment — ^was kneaded into what, only a week 
or two before, had been a lump of wet clay from the 
Tiber. Soon, apotheosized in an indestructible material, 
she would be one of the images that men keep forever, 
finding a heat in them which does not cool down, through- 
out the centuries. 

*‘What a woman is this I” exclaimed Miriam, after a 
long pause. “Tell me, did she ever try, even while you 
were creating her, to overcome you with her fury or her 
love? Were you not afraid to touch her, as she grew more 
ai^d more towards hot life beneath your hand? My dear 
friend, it is a great work! How have you learned to do it?’* 

“It is the concretion of a good deal of thought, emotion, 
and toil of brain and hand,” said Kenyon, not without a 
perception that his work was good; “but I know not how it 
came about at last. I kindled a great fire within my mind, 
and threw in the material, — as Aaron threw the gold of the 
Israelites into the furnace, — and in the midmost heat 
uprose Cleopatra, as you see her.” 

“What I most marvel at,” said Miriam, “is the woman- 
hood that you have so thoroughly mixed up with all those 
seemingly discordant elements. Where did you get that 

128 


CLEOPATRA 


secret? You never found it in your gentle Hilda, yet I 
recognize its truth/" 

“No, surely, it was not in Hilda,” said Kenyon. “Her 
womanhood is of the ethereal type, and incompatible with 
any shadow of darkness or evil.” 

“You are right,’" rejoined Miriam; “there are women 
of that ethereal type as you term it, and Hilda is one 
of them. She would die of her first wrong-doing, — sup- 
posing for a moment that she could be capable of doing 
wrong. Of sorrow, slender as she seems, Hilda might 
bear a great burden; of sin, not a feather’s weight. Me- 
thinks now, were it my doom, I could bear either, or both 
at once; but my conscience is still as white as Hilda’s. 
Do you question it?” 

“Heaven forbid, Miriam !” exclaimed the sculptor. 

He was startled at the strange turn which she had so 
suddenly given to the conversation. Her voice, too, — so 
much emotion was stifled rather than expressed in it, — 
smmded unnatural. 

“Oh, my friend,” cried she, with sudden passion, “will 
you be my friend indeed? I am lonely, lonely, lonely! 
There is a secret in my heart that burns me, — that tor- 
tures me ! Sometimes I f ear to go mad of it ; sometimes 
I hope to die of it; but neither of the two happens. Ah, 
if I could but whisper it to only one human soul! Auid 
you — you see far into womanhood; you receive it widely 
into your large view. Perhaps — perhaps, but Heaven only 
knows, you might understand me! Oh, let me speak!” 

“Miriam, dear friend,” replied the sculptor, “if I can 
help you, speak freely, as to a brother.” 

“Help me? No !” said Miriam. 

Kenyon’s response had been perfectly frank and kind; 
and yet the subtlety of Miriam’s emotion detected a cer- 
tain reserve and alarm in his warmly expressed readiness 

129 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

to hear her story. In his secret soul, to say the truth, the 
sculptor doubted whether it were well for this poor, suf- 
fering girl to speak what she so yearned to say, or for him 
to listen. If there were any active duty of friendship 
to be performed, then, indeed, he would joyfully have 
come forward to do his best. But if it were only a pent- 
up heart that sought an outlet.? in that case it was by no 
means so certain that a confession would do good. The 
more her secret struggled and fought to be told, the more 
certain would it be to change all former relations that 
had subsisted between herself and the friend to wliom 
she might reveal it. Unless he could give her all the 
sympathy, and just the kind of sympathy that the oc- 
casion required, Miriam would hate him by and by, and 
herself still more, if he let her speak. 

This was what Kenyon said to himself ; but his re- 
luctance, after all, and whether he were conscious of it 
or no, resulted from a suspicion that had crept into his 
heart and lay there in a dark corner. Obscure as it was, 
when Miriam looked into his eyes, she detected it at 
once. 

“Ah, I shall hate youU cried she, echoing the thought 
which he had not spoken; she was half choked with the 
gush of passion that was thus turned back upon her. “You 
are as cold and pitiless as your own marble.’" 

“No; but full of sympathy, God knows!” replied he. 

In truth his suspicions, however warranted by the mys- 
tery in which Miriam was enveloped, had vanished in the 
earnestness of his kindly and sorrowful emotion. He was 
now ready to receive her trust. 

“Keep your sympathy, then, for sorrows that admit 
of such solace,” said she, making a strong effort to com- 
pose herself. “As for my griefs, I know how to manage 
them. It was all a mistake: you can do nothing for me, 

130 


CLEOPATRA 


1 

i 

j unless you petrify me into a marble companion for your 
Cleopatra there; and I am not of her sisterhood^ I do 
i assure you. horget this foolish scene^ my friend^ and 
never let me see a reference to it in your eyes when they 
meet mine hereafter.” 

“Since you desire it^ all shall be forgotten^” answered 
the sculptor, pressing her hand as she departed; “or, if 
ever I can serve you, let my readiness to do so be remem- 
bered. Meanwhile, dear Miriam, let us meet in the same 
clear, friendly light as heretofore.” 

“You are less sincere than I thought you,” said Mir- 
iam, “if you try to make me think that there will be no 
change.” 

As he attended her through the antechamber, she pointed 
to the statue of the pearl-diver. 

“My secret is not a pearl,” said she; “yet a man might 
drown himself in plimging after it.” 

After Kenyon had closed the door, she went wearily 
down the staircase, but paused midway, as if debating 
with herself whether to return. 

“The mischief was done,” thought she; “and I might 
as well have had the solace that ought to come with it. 
I have lost, — by staggering a little way beyond the mark, 
in the blindness of my distress, — I have lost, as we shall 
hereafter find, the genuine friendship of this clear-minded, 
honorable, true-hearted young man, and all for nothing. 
What if I should go back this moment and compel him to 
listen 

She ascended two or three of the stairs, but again 
paused, murmured to herself, and shook her head. 

“No, no, no,” she thought; “and I wonder how I 
ever came to dream of it. Unless I had his heart for my 
own, — and that is Hilda’s, nor would I steal it from her, 
— it should never be the treasure-place of my secret. It is 

131 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


no precious pearly as I just now told him; but my dark- 
red carbuncle — red as blood — ^is too rich a gem to put 
into a stranger’s casket.” 

She went down the stairs^ and found her Shadow wait- 
ing for her in the street. 


132 


CHAPTER XV 


An AEsthetic Company 

On the evening after Miriam’s visit to Kenyon’s studio^ 
there was an assemblage composed almost entirely of 
Anglo-Saxons, and chiefly of American artists, with a 
sprinkling of their English brethren; and some few of 
the tourists who still lingered in Rome, now that Holy 
Week was past. Miriam, Hilda, and the sculptor were 
all three present, and, with them, Donatello, whose life was 
so far turned from its natural bent, that, like a pet spaniel, 
he followed his beloved mistress wherever he could gain ad- 
mittance. 

The place of meeting was in the palatial, but some- 
what faded and gloomy apartment of an eminent mem- 
ber of the aesthetic body. It was no more formal an 
occasion than one of those weekly receptions, common 
among the foreign residents of Rome, at which pleasant 
people — or disagreeable ones, as the case may be — en- 
counter one another with little ceremony. 

If anywise interested in art, a man must be difficult 
to please who cannot find fit companionship among a crowd 
of persons, whose ideas and pursuits all tend towards 
the general purpose of enlarging the world’s stock of beau- 
tiful productions. 

One of the chief causes that make Rome the favorite 
residence of artists — their ideal home which they sigh 
for in advance, and are so loath to migrate from, after once 
breathing its enchanted air — is, doubtless, that they there find 

133 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

themselves in force^ and are numerous enough to create a 
congenial atmosphere. In every other clime they are 
isolated strangers; in this land of art^ they are free citi- 
zens. 

Not that^ individually, or in the mass, there appears to 
be any large stock of mutual affection among the brethren 
of the chisel and the pencil. On the contrary, it will 
impress the shrewd observer that the jealousies and petty 
animosities, which the poets of our day have flung aside, 
still irritate and gnaw into the hearts of this kindred 
class of imaginative men. It is not difficult to suggest rea- 
sons why this should be the fact. The public, in whose 
good graces lie the sculptor’s or the painter’s prospects of 
success, is infinitely smaller than the public to which literary 
men make their appeal. It is composed of a very limited 
body of wealthy patrons ; and . these, as the artist well 
knows, are but blind judges in matters that require the 
utmost delicacy of perception. Thus, success in art is apt 
to become partly an affair of intrigue; and it is almost 
inevitable that even a gifted artist should look askance at 
his gifted brother’s fame, and be chary of the good word 
that might help him to sell still another statue or picture. 
You seldom hear a painter heap generous praise on any- 
thing in his special line of art; a sculptor never has a favor- 
able eye for any marble but his own. 

Nevertheless, in spite of all these professional grudges, 
artists are conscious of a social warmth from each other’s 
presence and contiguity. They shiver at the remembrance 
of their lonely studios in the unsympathizing cities of their 
native land. For the sake of such brotherhood as they can 
find, more than for any good that they get from galleries, 
they linger year after year in Italy, while their originality 
dies out of them, or is polished away as a barbarism. 

The company this evening included several men and 
134 


AN ESTHETIC COMPANY 


women whom the world has heard of, and many others, 
beyond all question, whom it ought to know. It would 
be a pleasure to introduce them upon our humble pages, 
name by name, and — had we confidence enough in our own 
taste — to crown each well-deserving brow according to 
its deserts. The opportunity is tempting, but not easily 
manageable, and far too perilous, both in respect to those 
individuals whom we might bring forward, and the far 
greater number that must needs be left in the shade. Ink, 
moreover, is apt to have a corrosive quality, and might 
chance to raise a blister, instead of any more agreeable 
titillation, on skins so sensitive as those of artists. We must 
therefore forego the delight of illuminating this chapter 
with personal allusions to men whose renown glows richly 
on canvas, or gleams in the white moonlight of marble. 

Otherwise we might point to an artist who has stud- 
ied Nature with such tender love that she takes him to 
her intimacy, enabling him to reproduce her in land- 
scapes that seem the reality of a better earth, and yet 
are but the truth of the very scenes around us, observed 
by the painter’s insight and interpreted for us by his 
skill. By his magic, the moon throws her light far out 
of the picture, and the crimson of the summer night 
absolutely glimmers on the beholder’s face. Or we might 
indicate a poet-painter, whose song has the vividness of 
picture, and whose canvas is peopled with angels, fairies, 
and water-sprites, done to the ethereal life, because he saw 
them face to face in his poetic mood. Or we might bow 
before an artist, who has wrought too sincerely, too reli- 
giously, with too earnest a feeling, and too delicate a touch, 
for the world at once to recognize how much toil and 
thought are compressed into the stately brow of Prospero, 
and Miranda’s maiden loveliness; or from what a depth 

135 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


within this painter’s heart the Angel is leading forth St. 
Peter. 

Thus it would be easy to go on^ perpetrating a score 
of little epigramraatical allusions^ like the above^ all kindly 
meant, but none of them quite hitting the mark, and often 
striking where they were not aimed. It may be allowable 
to say, however, that American art is much better repre- 
sented at Rome in the pictorial than in the sculpturesque 
department. Yet the men of marble appear to have more 
weight with the public than the men of canvas; perhaps on 
account of the greater density and solid substance of the 
material in which they work, and the sort of physical ad- 
vantage which their labors thus acquire over the illusive 
unreality of color. To be a sculptor seems a distinction in 
itself; whereas a painter is nothing, unless individually 
eminent. 

One sculptor there was, an Englishman, endowed with a 
beautiful fancy, and possessing at his fingers’ ends the 
capability of doing beautiful things. He was a quiet, sim- 
ple, elderly personage, with eyes brown and bright, under 
a slightly impending brow, and a Grecian profile, such 
as he might have cut with his own chisel. He had spent 
his life, for forty years, in making Venuses, Cupids, Bac- 
chuses, and a vast deal of other marble progeny of dream- 
work, or rather frost-work: it was all a vapory exhalation 
out of the Grecian mythology, crystallizing on the dull 
window-panes of to-day. Gifted with a more delicate 
power than any other man alive, he had foregone to be a 
Christian reality, and perverted himself into a Pagan ideal- 
ist, whose business or efficacy, in our present world, it 
would be exceedingly difficult to define. And, loving and 
reverencing the pure material in which he wrought, as 
surely this admirable sculptor did, he had nevertheless 
robbed the marble of its chastity, by giving it an artificial 

136 


AN ESTHETIC COMPANY 


warmth of hue. Thus it became a sin and shame to look 
at his nude goddesses. They had revealed themselves to his 
imagination, no doubt, with all their deity about them; 
but, bedaubed with buff-color, they stood forth to the eyes 
of the profane in the guise of naked women. But, what- 
ever criticism may be ventured on his style, it was good to 
meet a man so modest and yet imbued with such thorough 
and simple conviction of his own right principles and prac- 
tice, and so quietly satisfied that his kind of antique 
achievement was all that sculpture could effect for modern 
life. 

This eminent person’s weight and authority among his 
artistic brethren were very evident; for beginning unob- 
trusively to utter himself on a topic of art, he was soon 
the centre of a little crowd of younger sculptors. They 
drank in his wisdom, as if it would serve all the purposes 
of original inspiration; he, meanwhile, discoursing with 
gentle calmness, as if there could possibly be no other side, 
and often ratifying, as it were, his own conclusions by a 
mildly emphatic “Yes.” 

The veteran sculptor’s unsought audience was composed 
mostly of our own countrymen. It is fair to say, that they 
were a body of very dexterous and capable artists, each 
of whom had probably given the delighted public a nude 
statue, or had won credit for even higher skill by the nice 
carving of button-holes, shoe-ties, coat-seams, shirt-bosoms, 
and other such graceful peculiarities of modern costume. 
Smart, practical men they doubtless were, and some of 
them far more than this, but, still, not precisely what an 
uninitiated person looks for in a sculptor. A sculptor, in- 
deed, to meet the demands which our preconceptions make 
upon him, should be even more indispensably a poet than 
those who deal in measured verse and rhyme. His ma- 
terial, or instrument, which serves him in the stead of 

137 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


shifting and transitory language^ is a pure^ white^ un- 
decaying substance. It insures immortality to whatever is 
wrought in it^ and therefore makes it a religious obliga- 
tion to commit no idea to its mighty guardianship, save such 
as may repay the marble for its faithful care, its incor- 
ruptible fidelity, by warming it with an ethereal life. 
Under this aspect, marble assumes a sacred character; and 
no man should dare to touch it unless he feels within him- 
self a certain conseeration and a priesthood, the only evi- 
dence of which, for the public eye, will be the high treat- 
ment of heroic subjects, or the delicate evolution of spirit- 
ual, through material beauty. 

No ideas such as the foregoing — no misgivings sug- 
gested by them — probably troubled the self-complacency 
of most of these clever sculptors. Marble, in their view, 
had no such sanctity as we impute to it. It was merely a 
sort of white limestone from Carrara, cut into convenient 
blocks, and worth, in that state, about two or three dollars 
per pound; and it was susceptible of being wrought into 
certain shapes (by their own mechanical ingenuity, or that 
of artisans in their employment) which would enable them 
to sell it again at a much higher figure. Such men, on the 
strength of some small knack in handling clay, which might 
have been fitly employed in making wax-work, are bold 
to call themselves sculptors. How terrible should be the 
thought, that the nude woman whom the modern artist 
patches together, bit by bit, from a dozen heterogeneous 
models, meaning nothing by her, shall last as long as the 
Venus of the Capitol! — that his group of — no matter what, 
since it has no moral or intellectual existence — ^will not physi- 
cally crumble any sooner than the immortal agony of the 
Laocodn ! 

Yet we love the artists, in every kind; even these, whose 
merits we are not quite able to appreciate. Sculptors, paint- 

138 


AN ESTHETIC COMPANY 


ers, crayon-sketcliers, or whatever branch of aesthetics they 
adopted, were certainly pleasanter people, as we saw them 
that evening, than the average whom we meet in ordinary 
society. They were not wholly confined within the sordid 
compass of practical life; they had a pursuit which, if 
followed faithfully out, would lead them to the beautiful, 
and always had a tendency thitherward, even if they lin- 
gered to gather up golden dross by the wayside. Their 
actual business (though they talked about it very much 
as other men talk of cotton, politics, flour-barrels, and 
sugar) necessarily illuminated their conversation with 
something akin to the ideal. So, when the guests collected 
themselves in little groups, here and there, in the wide sa- 
loon, a cheerful and airy gossip began to be heard. The 
atmosphere ceased to be precisely that of common life; a 
faint, mellow tinge, such as we see in pictures, mingled it- 
self with the lamplight. 

This good effect was assisted by many curious little 
treasures of art, which the host had taken care to strew 
upon his tables. They were principally such bits of antiq- 
uity as the soil of Rome and its neighborhood are still 
rich in; seals, gems, small figures of bronze, mediaeval 
carvings in ivory; things which had been obtained at little 
cost, yet might have borne no inconsiderable value in the 
museum of a virtuoso. 

As interesting as any of these relics was a large port- 
folio of old drawings, some of which, in the opinion of their 
possessor, bore evidence on their faces of the touch of 
master-hands. Very ragged and ill-conditioned they mostly 
were, yellow with time, and tattered with rough usage; 
and, in their best estate, the designs had been scratched 
rudely with pen and ink, on coarse paper, or, if drawn 
with charcoal or a pencil, were now half rubbed out. You 
would not anywhere see rougher and homelier things than 

139 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


these. But this hasty rudeness made the sketches only 
the more valuable; because the artist seemed to have be- 
stirred himself at the pinch of the moment,, snatching 
up whatever material was nearest, so as to seize the first 
glimpse of an idea that might vanish in the twinkling 
of an eye. Thus, by the spell of a creased, soiled, and dis- 
colored scrap of paper, you were enabled to steal close to 
an old master, and watch him in the very effervescence of 
his genius. 

According to the judgment of several connoisseurs, 
Raphael’s own hand had communicated its magnetism 
to one of these sketches; and, if genuine, it was evidently 
his first conception of a favorite Madonna, now hanging in 
the private apartment of the Grand Duke, at Florence. 
Another drawing was attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, and 
appeared to be a somewhat varied design for his picture of 
Modesty and Vanity, in the Sciarra Palace. There were 
at least half a dozen others, to which the owner assigned as 
high an origin. It was delightful to believe in their 
authenticity, at all events ; f or these things make the specta- 
tor more vividly sensible of a great painter’s power, than 
the final glow and perfected art of the most consummate 
picture that may have been elaborated from them. There 
is . an effluence of divinity in the first sketch ; and there, 
if anywhere, you find the pure light of inspiration, which 
the subsequent toil of the artist serves to bring out in 
stronger lustre, indeed, but likewise adulterates it with 
what belongs to an inferior mood. The aroma and 
fragrance of new thought were perceptible in these designs, 
after three centuries of wear and tear. The charm lay 
partly in their very imperfection; for this is suggestive, 
and sets the imagination at work; whereas, the finished 
picture, if a good one, leaves the spectator nothing to do, 

140 


AN ESTHETIC COMPANY 


and, if bad, confuses, stupefies, disenchants, and dis- 
heartens him. 

Hilda was greatly interested in this rich portfolio. 
She lingered so long over one particular sketch, that 
Miriam asked her what discovery she had made. 

“Look at it carefully,” replied Hilda, putting the sketch 
into her hands. “If you take pains to disentangle the 
design from those pencil-marks that seem to have been 
scrawled over it, I think you will see something very 
curious.” 

“It is a hopeless affair, I am afraid,” said Miriam. 
“I have neither your faith, dear Hilda, nor your perceptive 
faculty. Fie! what a blurred scrawl it is indeed!” 

The drawing had originally been very slight, and had 
suffered more from time and hard usage than almost any 
other in the collection; it appeared, too, that there had 
been an attempt (perhaps by the very hand that drew it) 
to obliterate the design. By Hilda’s help, however, Miriam 
pretty distinctly made out a winged figure with a drawn 
sword, and a dragon, or a demon, prostrate at his feet. 

“I am convinced,” said Hilda, in a low, reverential tone, 
“that Guido’s own touches are on that ancient scrap of 
paper! If so, it must be his original sketch for the picture 
of the Archangel Michael setting his foot upon the demon, 
in the Church of the Cappuccini. The composition and 
general arrangement of the sketch are the same with those 
of the picture; the only difference being, that the demon 
has a more upturned face, and scowls vindictively at the 
Archangel, who turns away his eyes in painful disgust.” 

“No wonder!” responded Miriam. “The expression suits 
the daintiness of Michael’s character, as Guido represents 
him. He never could have looked the demon in the face !” 

“Miriam!” exclaimed her friend, reproachfully, “y®^ 
grieve me, and you know it, by pretending to speak con- 

141 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


temptuously of the most beautiful and the divinest figure 
that mortal painter ever drew.” 

“Forgive me^ Hilda !” said Miriam. “You take these mat- 
ters more religiously than I can, for my life. Guido’s Arch- 
angel is a fine picture, of course, but it never impressed me 
as it does you.” 

“Well; we will not talk of that,” answered Hilda. “What 
I wanted you to notice, in this sketch, is the face of the 
demon. It is entirely unlike the demon of the finished pic- 
ture. Guido, you know, always affirmed that the resem- 
blance to Cardinal Pamfili was either casual or imaginary. 
Now, here is the face as he first conceived it.” 

“And a more energetic demon, altogether, than that of the 
finished picture,” said Kenyon, taking the sketch into his 
hand. “What a spirit is conveyed into the ugliness of this 
strong, writhing, squirming dragon, under the Archangel’s 
foot! Neither is the face an impossible one. Upon my 
word, I have seen it somewhere, and on the shoulders of a 
living man!” 

“And so have I,” said Hilda. “It was what struck me 
from the first.” 

“Donatello, look at this face!” cried Kenyon. 

The young Italian, as may be supposed, took little in- 
terest in matters of art, and seldom or never ventured an 
opinion respecting them. After holding the sketch a single 
instant in his hand, he flung it from him with a shudder of 
disgust and repugnance, and a frown that had all the bitter- 
ness of hatred. 

“I know the face well!” whispered he. “It is Miriam’s 
model !” 

It was acknowledged both by Kenyon and Hilda that they 
had detected, or fancied, the resemblance which Donatello 
so strongly affirmed; and it added not a little to the gro- 
tesque and weird character which, half playfully, half seri- 

142 


AN ESTHETIC COMPANY 

ously^ they assigned to Miriam’s attendant, to think of him 
as personating the demon’s part in a picture of more than 
two centuries ago. Had Guido, in his effort to imagine the 
utmost of sin and misery, which his pencil could represent, 
hit ideally upon just this face.^* Or was it an actual por- 
trait of somebody, that haunted the old master, as Miriam 
was haunted now? Did the ominous shadow follow him 
through all the sunsliine of his earlier career, and into the 
gloom that gathered about its close ? And when Guido died, 
did the spectre betake himself to those ancient sepulchres, 
there awaiting a new victim, till it was Miriam’s ill-hap to 
encounter him? 

“I do not acknowledge the resemblance at all,” said 
Miriam, looking narrowly at the sketch; “and, as I have 
drawn the face twenty times, I think you will own that I 
am the best judge.” 

A discussion here arose, in reference to Guido’s Arch- 
angel, and it was agreed that these four friends should visit 
the Church of the Cappuccini the next morning, and critical- 
ly examine the picture in question ; the similarity between it 
and the sketch being, at all events, a very curious circum- 
stance. 

It was now a little past ten o’clock, when some of the 
company, who had been standing in a balcony, declared the 
moonlight to be resplendent. They proposed a ramble 
through the streets, taking in their way some of those scenes 
of ruin which produced their best effects under the splendor 
of the Italian moon. 


143 


CHAPTER XVI 


A Moonlight Ramble 

The proposal for a moonlight ramble was received with 
acclamation by all the younger portion of the company. 
They immediately set forth and descended from story to 
story, dimly lighting their way by waxen tapers, which are 
a necessary equipment to those whose thoroughfare, in the 
night-time, lies up and down a Roman staircase. Emerging 
from the court-yard of the edifice, they looked upward and 
saw the sky full of light, which seemed to have a delicate 
purple or crimson lustre, or, at least, some richer tinge than 
the cold, white moonshine of other skies. It gleamed over 
the front of the opposite palace, showing the architectural 
ornaments of its cornice and pillared portal, as well as the 
iron-barred basement-windows, that gave such a prison-like 
aspect to the structure, and the shabbiness and squalor that 
lay along its base. A cobbler was just shutting up his little 
shop, in the basement of the palace ; a cigar-vender’s lantern 
flared in the blast that came through the archway; a French 
sentinel paced to and fro before the portal; a homeless dog, 
that haunted thereabouts, barked as obstreperously at the 
party as if he were the domestic guardian of the precincts. 

The air was quietly full of the noise of falling water, the 
cause of which was nowhere visible, though apparently near 
at hand. This pleasant, natural sound, not unlike that of a 
distant cascade in the forest, may be heard in many of the 
Roman streets and piazzas, when the tumult of the city is 
hushed; for consuls, emperors, and popes, the great men of 

144 


A MOONLIGHT RAMBLE 


every age, have found no better way of immortalizing their 
memories, than by the shifting, indestructible, ever new, 
yet unchanging, up gush and downfall of water. They have 
written their names in that unstable element, and proved 
it a more durable record than brass or marble. 

“Donatello, you had better take one of those gay, boyish 
artists for your companion,” said Miriam, when she found 
the Italian youth at her side. “I am not now in a merry 
mood, as when we set all the world a-dancing the other af- 
ternoon, m the Borghese grounds.” 

“I never wish to dance any more,” answered Donatello. 

“What a melancholy was in that tone !” exclaimed Miriam. 
“You are getting spoilt in this dreary Rome, and will be 
as wise and as wretched as all the rest of mankind, unless 
you go back soon to your Tuscan vineyards. Well; give me 
your arm then ! But take care that no friskiness comes over 
you. We must walk evenly and heavily to-night!” 

The party arranged itself according to its natural affini- 
ties or casual likings ; a sculptor generally choosing a 
painter, and a painter a sculptor, for his companion, in pre- 
ference to brethren of their own art. Kenyon would gladly 
have taken Hilda to himself, and have dravm her a little 
aside from the throng of merry wayfarers. But she kept 
near Miriam, and seemed, in her gentle and quiet way, to 
decline a separate alliance either with him or any other of 
her acquaintances. 

So they set forth, and had gone but a little way, when 
the narrow street emerged into a piazza, on one side of 
which, glistening and dimpling in the moonlight, was the 
most famous fountain in Rome. Its murmur — ^not to say 
its uproar — had been in the ears of the company, ever since 
they came into the open air. It was the Fountain of Trevi, 
which draws its precious water from a source far beyond 
the walls, "whence it flows hitherward through old subter- 

145 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


ranean aqueUucts^ and sparkles forth as pure as the virgin 
who first led Agrippa to its well-spring, by her father’s 
door. 

“I shall sip as much of this water as the hollow of my 
hand will hold,” said Miriam. “I am leaving Rome in a few 
days; and the tradition goes, that a parting draught at the 
Fountain of Trevi insures the traveller’s return, whatever 
obstacles and improbabilities may seem to beset him. Will 
you drink, Donatello.^” 

“Signorina, what you drink, I drink,” said the youth. 

They and the rest of the party descended some steps to 
the water’s brim, and, after a sip or two, stood gazing at the 
absurd design of the fountain, where some sculptor of 
Bernini’s school had gone absolutely mad in marble. It was 
a great palace-front, with niches and many bas-reliefs, out 
of which looked Agrippa’s legendary virgin, and several of 
the allegoric sisterhood; while, at the base, appeared Nep- 
tune, with his floundering steeds, and Tritons blowing their 
horns about him, and twenty other artificial fantasies, which 
the calm moonlight soothed into better taste than was native 
to them. 

And, after all, it was as magnificent a piece of work 
as ever human skill contrived. At the foot of the palatial 
fa9ade was strown, with careful art and ordered irregulari- 
ty, a broad and broken heap of massive rock, looking as if 
it might have lain there since the deluge. Over a central 
precipice fell the water, in a semicircular cascade; and from 
a hundred crevices, on all sides, snowy jets gushed up, and 
streams spouted out of the mouths and nostrils of stone 
monsters, and fell in glistening drops; while other rivulets, 
that had run wild, came leaping from one rude step to an- 
other, over stones that were mossy, slimy, and green with 
sedge, because, in a century of their wild play. Nature had 
adopted the Fountain of Trevi, with all its elaborate devices, 

146 


A MOONLIGHT RAMBLE 


lor her own. Finally^ the water, tumbling, sparkling, and 
dashing, with joyous haste and never-ceasing murmur, 
poured itself into a great marble-brimmed reservoir, and 
filled it with a quivering tide; on which was seen, continu- 
ally, a snowy semicircle of momentary foam from the prin- 
cipal cascade, as well as a multitude of snow-points from 
smaller jets. The basin occupied the whole breadth of the 
piazza, whence flights of steps descended to its border. A 
boat might float, and make voyages from one shore to an- 
other in this mimic lake. 

In the daytime, there is hardly a livelier scene in Rome 
than the neighborhood of the Fountain of Trevi; for the 
piazza is then filled with the stalls of vegetable and fruit- 
dealers, chestnut-roasters, cigar-venders, and other people, 
whose petty and wandering traffic is transacted in the open 
air. It is likewise thronged with idlers, lounging over the 
iron railing, and with Forestieri, who came hither to see the 
famous fountain. Here, also, are seen men with buckets, 
urchins with cans, and maidens (a picture as old as the pa- 
triarchal times) bearing their pitchers upon their heads. 
For the water of Trevi is in request, far and wide, as the 
most refreshing draught for feverish lips, the pleasantest 
to mingle with wine, and the wholesomest to drink, in its 
native purity, that can anywhere be found. But now, at 
early midnight, the piazza was a solitude; and it was a de- 
light to behold this untamable water, sporting by itself in 
the moonshine, and compelling all the elaborate trivialities of 
art to assume a natural aspect, in accordance with its own 
powerful simplicity. 

“What would be done with this water-power,** suggested 
an artist, “if we had it in one of our American cities ? Would 
they employ it to turn the machinery of a cotton-mill, I 
wonder .^’* 

“The good people would pull down those rampant marble 
147 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


deities/’ said Kenyon, “and, possibly, they would give me a 
commission to carve the one-and-thirty (is that the num- 
ber?) sister States, each pouring a silver stream from a 
separate can into one vast basin, which should represent 
the grand reservoir of national prosperity.” 

“Or, if they wanted a bit of satire,” remarked an Eng- • 
lish artist, “you could set those same one-and-thirty States 
to cleansing the national flag of any stains that it may have 
incurred. The Roman washer-women at the lavatory yon- 
der, plying their labor in the open air, would serve admira- 
bly as models.” 

“I have often intended to visit this fountain by moon- 
light,” said Miriam, “because it was here that the interview 
took place between Corinne and Lord Neville, after their 
separation and temporary estrangement. Pray come be- 
hind me, one of you, and let me try whether the face can 
be recognized in the water.” 

Leaning over the stone brim of the basin, she heard foot- 
steps stealing behind her, and knew that somebody was 
looking over her shoulder. The moonshine fell directly be- 
hind Miriam, illuminating the palace-front and the whole 
scene of statues and rocks, and Ailing the basin, as it were, 
with tremulous and palpable light. Corinne, it will be 
remembered, knew Lord Neville by the reflection of his face 
in the water. In Miriam’s case, however (owing to the 
agitation of the water, its transparency, and the angle at 
which she was compelled to lean over), no reflected image 
appeared; nor, from the same causes, would it have been 
possible for the recognition between Corinne and her lover 
to take place. The moon, indeed, flung Miriam’s shadow at 
the bottom of the basin, as well as two more shadows of per- 
sons who had followed her, on either side. 

“Three shadows!” exclaimed Miriam. “Three separate 
shadows, all so black and heavy that they sink in the water ! 

148 


A MOONLIGHT RAMBLE 


There they lie on the bottom, as if all three were drowned 
together. This shadow on my right is Donatello; I know 
him by his curls, and the turn of his head. My left-hand 
companion puzzles me; a shapeless mass, as indistinct as the 
premonition of calamity! Which of you can it be.^ Ah!” 

She had turned round, while speaking, and saw beside her 
the strange creature, whose attendance on her was already 
familiar, as a marvel and a jest, to the whole company of 
artists. A general burst of laughter followed the recogni- 
tion ; while the model leaned towards Miriam, as she shrank 
from him, and muttered something that was inaudible to 
those who witnessed the scene. By his gestures, however, 
they concluded that he was inviting her to bathe her hands. 

“He cannot be an Italian; at least not a Roman,” ob- 
served an artist. “I never knew one of them to care about 
ablution. See him now ! It is as if he were trying to wash 
off the time-stains and earthly soil of a thousand years !” 

Dipping his hands into the capacious washbowl before 
him, the model rubbed them together with the utmost vehe- 
mence. Ever and anon, too, he peeped into the water, as if 
expecting to see the whole Fountain of Trevi turbid with 
the results of his ablution. Miriam looked at him, some little 
time, with an aspect of real terror, and even imitated him 
by leaning over to peep into the basin. Recovering herself, 
she took up some of the water in the hollow of her hand, 
and practised an old form of exorcism by flinging it in her 
persecutor’s face. 

“In the name of all the saints,” cried she, “vanish. 
Demon, and let me be free of you now and forever!” 

“It will not suffice,” said some of the mirthful party, “un- 
less the Fountain of Trevi gushes with holy water.” 

In fact, the exorcism was quite ineffectual upon the perti- 
nacious demon, or whatever the apparition might be. Still 
he washed his brown, bony talons; still he peered into the 

149 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


vast 'basin^ as if all the water of that great drinking-cup 
of Rome must needs be stained black or sanguine ; and still 
he gesticulated to Miriam to follow his example. The spec- 
tators laughed loudly, but yet with a kind of constraint; for 
the creature’s aspect was strangely repulsive and hideous. 

Miriam felt her arm seized violently by Donatello. She 
looked at him, and beheld a tiger-like fury gleaming from 
his wild eyes. 

“Bid me drown him !” whispered he, shuddering between 
rage and horrible disgust. “You shall hear his death-gurgle 
in another instant!” 

“Peace, peace, Donatello!” said Miriam, soothingly, for 
this naturally gentle and sportive being seemed all aflame 
with animal rage. “Do him no mischief! He is mad; and 
we are as mad as he, if we suffer ourselves to be disquieted 
by his antics. Let us leave him to bathe his hands till the 
fountain run dry, if he find solace and pastime in it. What 
is it to you or me, Donatello.^ There, there ! Be quiet, fool- 
ish boy!” 

Her tone and gesture were such as she might have used 
in taming down the wrath of a faithful hound, that had 
taken upon himself to avenge some supposed affront to his 
mistress. She smoothed the young man’s curls (for his 
fierce and sudden fury seemed to bristle among his hair), 
and touched his cheek with her soft palm, till his angry 
mood was a little assuaged. 

“Signorina, do I look as when you first knew me?” asked 
he, with a heavy, tremulous sigh, as they went onward, 
somewhat apart from their companions. “Methinks there 
has been a change upon me, these many months; and more 
and more, these last few days. The joj^ is gone out of my 
life; all gone! all gone ! Feel my hand! Is it not very hot? 
Ah ; and my heart burns hotter still !” 

“My poor Donatello, you are ill!” said Miriam, with 
150 


A MOONLIGHT RAMBLE 


deep sympathy and pity. “This melancholy and sickly Rome 
is stealing away the rich, joyous life that belongs to you. 
Go back, my dear friend, to your home among the hills, 
where (as I gather from what you have told me) your days 
were filled with simple and blameless delights. Have you 
found aught in the world that is worth what you there en- 
joyed.^ Tell me truly, Donatello!’* 

“Yes !” replied the young man. 

“And what, in Heaven’s name?” asked she. 

“This burning pain in my heart,” said Donatello; “for 
you are in the midst of it.” 

By this time, they had left the Fountain of Trevi consid- 
erably behind them. Little further allusion was made to 
the scene at its margin; for the party regarded Miriam’s 
persecutor as diseased in his wits, and were hardly to be 
surprised by any eccentricity in his deportment. 

Threading several narrow streets, they passed through the 
Piazza of the Holy Apostles, and soon came to Trajan’s 
Forum. All over the surface of what once was Rome, it 
seems to be the effort of Time to bury up the ancient city, 
as if it were a corpse, and he the sexton ; so that, in eighteen 
centuries, the soil over its grave has grown very deep, by the 
slow scattering of dust, and the accumulation of more mod- 
ern decay upon older ruin. 

This was the fate, also, of Trajan’s Forum, until some 
papal antiquary, a few hundred years ago, began to hollow 
it out again, and disclosed the full height of the gigantic 
colunm wreathed round with bas-reliefs of the old emperor’s 
warlike deeds. In the area before it stands a grove of stone, 
consisting of the broken and unequal shafts of a vanished 
temple, still keeping a majestic order, and apparently inca- 
pable of further demolition. The modern edifices of the 
piazza (wholly built, no doubt, out of the spoil of its old 

151 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


magnificence) look down into the hollow space whence these 
pillars rise. 

One of the immense gray granite shafts lay in the piazza, 
on the verge of the area. It w'as a great, solid fact of the 
Past, making old Rome actually sensible to the touch and 
eye; and no study of history, nor force of thought, nor 
magic of song, could so vitally assure us that Rome once ex- 
isted, as this sturdy specimen of what its rulers and people 
wrought. 

“And see !” said Kenyon, laying his hand upon it, “there 
is still a polish remaining on the hard substance of the pil- 
lar; and even now, late as it is, I can feel very sensibly the 
warmth of the noonday sun, which did its best to heat it 
through. This shaft will endure forever. The polish of 
eighteen centuries ago, as yet but half rubbed off, and the 
heat of to-day’s sunshine, lingering into the night, seem 
almost equally ephemeral in relation to it.” 

“There is comfort to be found in the pillar,” remarked 
Miriam, “hard and heavy as it is. Lying here forever, as it 
will, it makes all human trouble appear but a momentary 
annoyance.” 

“And human happiness as evanescent too,” observed Hil- 
da, sighing; “and beautiful art hardly less so ! I do not love 
to think that this dull stone, merely by its massiveness, will 
last infinitely longer than any picture, in spite of the spirit- 
ual life that ought to give it immortality!” 

“My poor little Hilda,” said Miriam, kissing her com- 
passionately, “would you sacrifice this greatest mortal con- 
solation, which we derive from the transitoriness of all 
things, — from the right of saying, in every conjecture, 
‘This, too, will pass away,’ — would you give up this un- 
speakable boon, for the sake of making a picture eternal?” 

Their moralizing strain was interrupted by a demonstra- 
tion from the rest of the party, who, after talking and laugh- 

152 


A MOONLIGHT RAMBLE 


ing together, suddenly joined their voices, and shouted at 
full pitch, — 

“Trajan! Trajan!’" 

“Why do you deafen us with such an uproar?” inquired 
Miriam. 

In truth, the whole piazza had been filled with their idle 
vociferation; the echoes from the surrounding houses rever- 
berating the cry of “Trajan,” on all sides; as if there was a 
great search for that imperial personage, and not so much 
as a handful of his ashes to be found. 

“Why, it was a good opportunity to air our voices in this 
resounding piazza,” replied one of the artists. “Besides, we 
had really some hopes of summoning Trajan to look at his 
column, which, you know, he never saw in his lifetime. 
Here is your model (who, they say, lived and sinned before 
Trajan’s death) still wandering about Rome; and why not 
the Emperor Trajan?” 

“Dead emperors have very little delight in their columns, 
I am afraid,” observed Kenyon. “All that rich sculpture 
of Trajan’s bloody warfare, twining from the base of the 
pillar to its capital, may be but an ugly spectacle for his 
ghostly eyes, if he considers that this huge, storied shaft 
must be laid before the judgment-seat, as a piece of the evi- 
dence of what he did in the flesh. If ever I am employed 
to sculpture a hero’s monument, I shall think of this, as I 
put in the bas-reliefs of the pedestal!” 

“There are sermons in stones,” said Hilda, thoughtfully, 
smiling at Kenyon’s morality; “and especially in the stones 
of Rome.” 

The party moved on, but deviated a little from the straight 
way, in order to glance at the ponderous remains of the tem- 
ple of Mars Ultor, within which a convent of nuns is now 
established, — a dove-cote, in the war-god’s mansion. At 
only a little distance, they passed the portico of a Temple of 

153 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


Minerva^ most rich and beautiful in architecture, but wo- 
fully gnawed by time and shattered by violence, besides 
being buried midway in the accumulation of soil, that rises 
over dead Rome like a flood-tide. Within this edifice of 
antique sanctity, a baker’s shop was now established, with an 
entrance on one side; for, everywhere, the remnants of old 
grandeur and divinity have been made available for the 
meanest necessities of to-day. 

“The baker is just drawing his loaves out of the oven,” 
remarked Kenyon. “Do you smell how sour they are.^ I 
should fancy that Minerva (in revenge for the desecration 
of her temple) had slyly poured vinegar into the batch, if 
I did not know that the modern Romans prefer their bread 
in the acetous fermentation.” 

They turned into the Via Alessandria, and thus gained 
the rear of the Temple of Peace, and, passing beneath its 
great arches, pursued their way along a hedge-bordered 
lane. In all probability, a stately Roman street lay buried 
beneath that rustic-looking pathway; for they had now 
emerged from the close and narrow avenues of the modern 
city, and were treading on a soil where the seeds of antique 
grandeur had not yet produced the squalid crop that else- 
where sprouts from them. Grassy as the lane was, it skirted 
along heaps of shapeless ruin, and the bare site of the vast 
temple that Hadrian planned and built. It terminated on 
the edge of a somewhat abrupt descent, at the foot of which, 
with a muddy ditch between, rose, in the bright moonlight, 
the great curving wall and multitudinous arches of the 
Coliseum. 


154 


CHAPTER XVII 
Miriam's Trouble 

As usual of a moonlight evening, several carriages stood 
at the entrance of this famous ruin, and the precincts and 
interior were anything but a solitude. The French senti- 
nel on duty beneath the principal archway eyed our party 
curiously, but offered no obstacle to their admission. Within, 
the moonlight filled and flooded the great empty space; it 
glowed upon tier above tier of ruined, grass-grown arches, 
and made them even too distinctly visible. The splendor of 
the revelation took away that inestimable effect of dimness 
and mystery by which the imagination might be assisted to 
build a grander structure than the Coliseum, and to shatter 
it with a more picturesque decay. Byron’s celebrated des- 
cription is better than the reality. He beheld the scene in 
his mind’s eye, through the witchery of many intervening 
years, and faintly illuminated it as if with starlight in- 
stead of this broad glow of moonshine. 

The party of our friends sat down, three or four of them 
on a prostrate column, another on a shapeless lump of mar- 
ble, once a Roman altar; others on the steps of one of the 
Christian shrines. Goths and barbarians though they were, 
they chatted as gayly together as if they belonged to the 
gentle and pleasant race of people who now inhabit Italy. 
There was much pastime and gayety just then in the area 
of the Coliseum, where so many gladiators and wild beasts 
had fought and died, and where so much blood of Christian 
martyrs had been lapped up by that fiercest of wild beasts, 

155 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


the Roman populace of yore. Some youths and maidens 
were running merry races across the open space^ and play- 
ing at hide-and-seek a little way within the duskiness of the 
ground-tier of arches^ whence now and then you could hear^ 
the half -shriek, half-laugh of a frolicsome girl, whom the 
shadow had betrayed into a young man’s arms. Elder 
groups were seated on the fragments of pillars and blocks 
of marble that lay round the verge of the arena, talking in 
the quick, short ripple of the Italian tongue. On the steps 
of the great black cross in the centre of the Coliseum sat 
a party singing scraps of songs, with much laughter and 
merriment between the stanzas. 

It was a strange place for song and mirth. That black 
cross marks one of the special blood-spots of the earth 
where, thousands of times over, the dying gladiator fell, and 
more of human agony has been endured for the mere pas- 
time of the multitude than on the breadth of many battle- 
fields. From all this crime and suffering, however, the spot 
has derived a more than common sanctity. An inscription 
promises seven years’ indulgence, seven years of remission 
from the pains of purgatory, and earlier enjoyment of 
heavenly bliss, for each separate kiss imprinted on the black 
cross. What better use could be made of life, after middle- 
age, when the accumulated sins are many and the remain- 
ing temptations few, than to spend it all in kissing the black 
cross of the Coliseum! 

Besides its central consecration, the whole area has been 
made sacred by a range of shrines, which are erected round 
the circle, each commemorating some scene or circumstance 
of the Saviour’s passion and suffering. In accordance with 
an ordinary custom a pilgrim was making his progress from 
shrine to shrine upon his knees, and saying a penitential 
prayer at each. Light-footed girls ran across the path along 
which he crept, or sported with their friends close by the 

156 


MIRIAM’S TROUBLE 


shrines where he was kneeling. The pilgrim took no heed, 
and the girls meant no irreverence; for in Italy religion 
jostles along side by side with business and sport, after 
a fashion of its own, and people are accustomed to kneel 
down and pray, or see others praying, between two fits of 
merriment, or between two sins. 

To make an end of our description, a red twinkle of light 
was visible amid the breadth of shadow that fell across the 
upper part of the Coliseum. Now it glimmered through a 
line of arches, or threw a broader gleam as it rose out of 
some profound abyss of ruin; now it was muffled by a heap 
of shrubbery which had adventurously clambered to that 
dizzy height; and so the red light kept ascending to loftier 
and loftier ranges of the structure, until it stood like a star 
where the blue sky rested against the Coliseum’s topmost 
wall. It indicated a party of English or Americans paying 
the inevitable visit by moonlight, and exalting themselves 
with raptures that were Bj’^ron’s, not their own. 

Our company of artists sat on the fallen column, the 
pagan altar, and the steps of the Christian shrine, enjoying 
the moonlight and shadow, the present gayety and the 
gloomy reminiscences of the scene, in almost equal share. 
Artists, indeed, are lifted by the ideality of their pursuits 
a little way off the earth, and are therefore able to catch 
the evanescent fragrance that floats in the atmosphere of 
life above the heads of the ordinary crowd. Even if they 
seem endowed with little imagination individually, yet there 
is a property, a gift, a talisman, common to their class, en- 
titling them to partake somewhat more bountifully than 
other people in the thin delights of moonshine and romance. 

“How delightful this is!” said Hilda; and she sighed 
for very pleasure. 

“Yes,” said Kenyon, who sat on the column, at her side. 
“The Coliseum is far more delightful, as we enjoy it now, 

157 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


than when eighty thousand persons sat squeezed together, 
row above row, to see their fellow-creatures torn by lions 
and tigers limb from limb. What a strange thought that 
the Coliseum was reallj'^ built for us, and has not come to 
its best uses till almost two thousand years after it was 
finished !” 

“The Emperor Vespasian scarcely had us in his mind,” 
said Hilda^ smiling; “but I thank him none the less for 
building it.” 

“He gets small thanks, I fear, from the people whose 
bloody instincts he pampered,” rejoined Kenyon. “Fancy 
a nightly assemblage of eighty thousand melancholy and 
remorseful ghosts, looking down from those tiers of broken 
arches, striving to repent of the savage pleasures which 
they once enjoyed, but still longing to enjoy them over 
again.” 

“You bring a Gothic horror into this peaceful moonlight 
scene,” said Hilda. 

“Nay, I have good authority for peopling the Coliseum 
with phantoms,” replied the sculptor. “Do you remember 
that veritable scene in Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography, 
in which a necromancer of his acquaintance draws a magic 
circle — just where the black cross stands now, I suppose — 
and raises myriads of demons? Benvenuto saw them with 
his own eyes, — giants, pygmies, and other creatures of 
frightful aspect, — capering and dancing on yonder walls. 
Those spectres must have been Romans, in their lifetime, 
and frequenters of this bloody amphitheatre.” 

“I see a spectre, now !” said Hilda, with a little thrill of 
uneasiness. “Have you watched that pilgrim, who is going 
round the whole circle of shrines, on his knees, and praying 
with such fervency at every one? Now that he has revolved 
so far in his orbit, and has the moonshine on his face as 
he turns towards us, methinks I recognize him!” 

158 


MIRIAM’S TROUBLE 


“And so do I/* said Kenyon. “Poor Miriam! Do you 
think she sees him?’" 

They looked round, and perceived that Miriam had risen 
from the steps of the shrine and disappeared. She had 
shrunk back, in fact, into the deep obscurity of an arch that 
opened just behind them. 

Donatello, whose faithful watch was no more to be eluded 
than that of a hound, had stolen after her, and became the 
innocent witness of a spectacle that had its own kind of 
horror. Unaware of his presence, and fancying herself 
wholly unseen, the beautiful Miriam began to gesticulate 
extravagantly, gnashing her teeth, flinging her arms wildly 
abroad, stamping with her foot. It was as if she had 
stepped aside for an instant, solely to snatch the relief of a 
brief fit of madness. Persons in acute trouble, or laboring 
under strong excitement, with a necessity for concealing it, 
are prone to relieve their nerves in this wild way ; although, 
when practicable, they find a more eff’ectual solace in shriek- 
ing aloud. 

Thus, as soon as she threw off her self-control, under the 
dusky arches of the Coliseum, we may consider Miriam as 
a mad woman, concentrating the elements of a long insanity 
into that instant. 

“Signorina ! signorina 1 have pity on me !” cried Dona- 
tello, approaching her; “this is too terrible!” 

“How dare you look at me!” exclaimed Miriam, with a 
start; then, whispering below her breath, “men have been 
struck dead for a less offence!” 

“If you desire it, or need it,” said Donatello, humbly, 
“I shall not be loath to die.” 

“Donatello,” said Miriam, coming close to the young man, 
and speaking low, but still the almost insanity of the mo- 
ment vibrating in her voice, “if you love yourself ; if you 
desire those earthly blessings, such as you, of all men, 

159 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


were made f or ; if you would come to a good old age among \ 
your olive-orchards and your Tuscan vines, as your fore- | 
fathers did; if you would leave children to enjoy the same ^ 
peaeeful, happy, innocent life, then flee from me. Look not ( 
behind you! Get you gone without another word.” He . 
gazed sadly at her, but did not stir. “I tell you,” Miriam 
went on, “there is a great evil hanging over me I I know i 
it; I see it in the sky; I feel it in the air! It will over- 
whelm me as utterly as if this areh should crumble down 
upon our heads ! It will crush you, too, if you stand at my 
side! Depart, then; and make the sign of the cross, as 
your faith bids you, when an evil spirit is nigh. Cast me 
oflf, or you are lost forever.” 

A higher sentiment brightened upon Donatello’s face 
than had hitherto seemed to belong to its simple expression 
and sensuous beauty. 

“I will never quit you,” he said; “you cannot drive me 
from you.” 

“Poor Donatello!” said Miriam, in a changed tone, and 
rather to herself than him. “Is there no other that seeks 
me out, — tfollows me, — is obstinate to share my afflietion and 
my doom, — ^but only you! They call me beautiful; and I 
used to fancy that, at my need, I could bring the whole 
world to my feet. And lo! here is my utmost need; and 
my beauty and my gifts have brought me only this poor, 
simple boy. Half-witted, they call him; and surely fit for 
nothing but to be happy. And I accept his aid ! To-morrow, 
to-morrow, I will tell him all ! Ah ! what a sin to stain his 
joyous nature with the blackness of a woe like mine!” 

She held out her hand to him, and smiled sadly as Dona- 
tello pressed it to his lips. They were now about to emerge 
from the depth of the arch; but, just then, the kneeling 
pilgrim, in his revolution round the orbit of the shrines, 
had reached the one on the steps of which Miriam had 

160 


MIRIAM’S TROUBLE 


been sitting. Tliere^ as at the other shrines, he prayed, or 
seemed to pray. It struck Kenyon, however, — who sat close 
by, and saw his face distinctly, — that the suppliant was 
merely performing an enjoined penance, and without the 
penitence that ought to have given it effectual life. Even 
as he knelt, his eyes wandered, and Miriam soon felt that 
he had detected her, half hidden as she was within the ob- 
scurity of the arch. 

“He is evidently a good Catholic, however,** whispered 
one of the party. “After all, I fear we cannot identify him 
with the ancient pagan who haunts the catacombs.’* 

“The doctors of the Propaganda may have converted 
him,’* said another; “they have had fifteen hundred years 
to perform the task.” 

The company now deemed it time to continue their ram- 
ble. Emerging from a side entrance of the Coliseum, they 
had on their left the Arch of Constantine, and, above it, 
the shapeless ruins of the Palace of the Caesars; portions of 
which have taken shape anew, in mediaeval convents and 
modern villas. They turned their faces cityward, and, 
treading over the broad flagstones of the old Roman pave- 
ment, passed through the Arch of Titus. The moon shone 
brightly enough within it, to show the seven-branched Jew- 
ish candlestick, cut in the marble of the interior. The 
original of that awful trophy lies buried, at this moment, in 
the yellow mud of the Tiber; and, could its gold of Ophir 
again be brought to light, it would be the most precious relic 
of past ages, in the estimation of both Jew and Gentile. 

Standing amid so much ancient dust, it is difficult to 
spare the reader the commonplaces of enthusiasm, on which 
hundreds of tourists have already insisted. Over this half- 
worn pavement, and beneath this Arch of Titus, the Roman 
armies had trodden in their outward march, to fight battles, 
a world’s width away. Returning victorious, with royal 

161 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


captives and inestimable spoil, a Roman triumph, that most I 
gorgeous pageant of earthly pride, had streamed and 
flaunted in hundred-fold succession over these same flag- 
stones, and through this yet stalwart archway. It is politic, 
however, to make few allusions to such a past; nor, if we 
would create an interest in the characters of our story, is 
it wise to suggest how Cicero’s foot may have stepped on 
yonder stone, or how Horace was wont to stroll near by, 
making his footsteps chime with the measure of the ode 
that was ringing in his mind. The very ghosts of that 
massive and stately epoch have so much density that the 
actual people of to-day seem the thinner of the two, and 
stand more ghostlike by the arches and columns, letting 
the rich sculpture be discerned through their ill-compacted 
substance. 

The party kept onward, often meeting pairs and groups 
of midnight strollers like themselves. On such a moon- 
light night as this, Rome keeps itself awake and stirring, 
and is full of song and pastime, the noise of which mingles 
with your dreams, if you have gone betimes to bed. But it 
is better to be abroad, and take our own share of the en- 
joyable time; for the languor that weighs so heavily in the 
Roman atmosphere by day is lightened beneath the moon 
and stars. 

They had now reached the precincts of the Forum. 


162 


CHAPTER XVIII 


On the Edge of a Precipice 

‘Xet us settle it^” said Kenyon, stamping his foot firmly 
down, “that this is precisely the spot where the chasm 
opened, into which Curtius precipitated his good steed and 
himself. Imagine the great, dusky gap, impenetrably deep, 
and with half -shaped monsters and hideous faces looming 
upward out of it, to the vast affright of the good citizens 
who peeped over the brim! There, now, is a subject, hitherto 
unthought of, for a grim and ghastly story, and, methinks, 
with a moral as deep as the gulf itself. Within it, beyond 
a question, there were prophetic visions, — intimations of all 
the future calamities of Rome, — shades of Goths, and 
Gauls, and even of the French soldiers of to-day. It was 
a pity to close it up so soon! I would give much for a 
peep into such a chasm.’^ 

“I fancy,” remarked Miriam, “that every person takes 
a peep into it in moments of gloom and despondency; that 
is to say, in his moments of deepest insight.” 

“Where is it, then.^” asked Hilda. “I never peeped into 
it.” 

“Wait, and it will open for you,” replied her friend. 
“The chasm was merely one of the orifices of that pit of 
blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere. The firmest 
substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread 
over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive 
stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earth- 
quake to open the chasm. A footstep, a little heavier than 

163 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


ordinary, will serve ; and we must step very daintily, not to 
break through the crust at any moment. By and by, we 
inevitably sink! It was a foolish piece of heroism in 
Curtius to precipitate himself there, in advance; for all 
Rome, you see, has been swallowed up in that gulf, in spite 
of him. The Palace of the Caesars has gone down thither, 
with a hollow, rumbling sound of its fragments! All the 
temples have tumbled into it; and thousands of statues have 
been thrown after! All the armies and the triumphs have 
marched into the great chasm, with their martial music play- 
ing, as they stepped over the brink. All the heroes, the 
statesmen, and the poets! All piled upon poor Curtius, 
who thought to have saved them all! I am loath to smile 
at the self-conceit of that gallant horseman, but cannot well 
avoid it.” 

“It grieves me to hear you speak thus, Miriam,” said 
Hilda, whose natural and cheerful piety was shocked by her 
friend’s gloomy view of human destinies. “It seems to me 
that there is no chasm, nor any hideous emptiness under our 
feet, except what the evil within us digs. If there be such 
a chasm, let us bridge it over with good thoughts and 
deeds, and we shall tread safely to the other side. It was 
the guilt of Rome, no doubt, that caused this gulf to open ; 
and Curtius filled it up with his heroic self-sacrifice and 
patriotism, which was the best virtue that the old Romans 
knew. Every wrong thing makes the gulf deeper; every 
right one helps to fill it up. As the evil of Rome was far 
more than its good, the whole commonwealth finally sank 
into it, indeed, but of no original necessity.” 

“Well, Hilda, it came to the same thing at last,” 
answered Miriam, despondingly. 

“Doubtless, too,” resumed the sculptor (for his imagina- 
tion was greatly excited by the idea of this wondrous 
chasm), “all the blood that the Romans shed, whether on 

164 


ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE 


battle-fields, or in the Coliseum, or on the cross, — in what- 
ever public or private murder, — ran into this fatal gulf, and 
formed a mighty subterranean lake of gore, right beneath 
our feet. The blood from the thirty wounds in Caesar’s 
breast flowed hitherward, and that pure little rivulet from 
Virginia’s bosom, too! Virginia, beyond all question, was 
stabbed by her father, precisely where we are standing.” 

“Then the spot is hallowed forever!” said Hilda. 

“Is there such blessed potency in bloodshed?” asked Mir- 
iam. “Nay, Hilda, do not protest! I take your meaning 
rightly.” 

They again moved forward. And still, from the Forum 
and the Via Sacra, from beneath the arches of the Temple 
of Peace on one side, and the acclivity of the Palace of the 
Caesars on the other, there arose singing voices of parties 
that were strolling through the moonlight. Thus, the air 
was full of kindred melodies that encountered one another, 
and twined themselves into a broad, vague music, out of 
which no single strain could be disentangled. These good 
examples, as well as the harmonious influences of the hour, 
incited our artist-friends to make proof of their own vocal 
powers. With what skill and breath they had, they set up 
a choral strain, — “Hail, Columbia!” we believe, — which 
those old Roman echoes must have found it exceeding diffi- 
cult to repeat aright. Even Hilda poured the slender sweet- 
ness of her note into her country’s song. Miriam was at 
first silent, being perhaps unfamiliar with the air and 
burden. But, suddenly, she threw out such a swell and gush 
of sound, that it seemed to pervade the whole choir of 
other voices, and then to rise above them all, and become 
audible in what would else have been the silence of an 
upper region. That volume of melodious voice was one 
of the tokens of a great trouble. There had long been an 
impulse upon her — amounting, at last, to a necessity — ^to 

165 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


shriek aloud; but she had struggled against it^ till the 
thunderous anthem gave her an opportunity to relieve her 
heart by a great cry. 

They passed the solitary Column of Phocas, and looked 
down into the excavated space, where a confusion of pillars, 
arches, pavements, and shattered blocks and shafts — ^the 
crumbs of various ruin dropped from the devouring maw 
of Time — stand, or lie, at the base of the Capitoline Hill. 
That renowned hillock (for it is little more) now arose 
abruptly above them. The ponderous masonry, with which 
the hill-side is built up, is as old as Rome itself, and looks 
likely to endure while the world retains any substance or 
permanence. It once sustained the Capitol, and now bears 
up the great pile which the mediasval builders raised on the 
antique foundation, and that still loftier tower, which looks 
abroad upon a larger page of deeper historic interest than 
any other scene can show. On the same pedestal of Roman 
masonry, other structures will doubtless rise, and vanish 
like ephemeral things. 

To a spectator on the spot, it is remarkable that the events 
of Roman history, and Roman life itself, appear not so dis- 
tant as the Gothic ages which succeeded them. We stand 
in the Forum, or on the height of the Capitol, and seem 
to see the Roman epoch close at hand. We forget that a 
chasm extends between it and ourselves, in which lie all 
those dark, rude, unlettered centuries, around the birth- 
time of Christianity, as well as the age of chivalry and 
romance, the feudal system, and the infancy of a better 
civilization than that of Rome. Or, if we remember these 
mediaeval times, they look further off than the Augustan 
age. The reason may be, that the old Roman literature sur- 
vives, and creates for us an intimacy with the classic ages, 
which we have no means of forming with the subsequent 
ones. 


166 


ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE 


The Italian climate, moreover, robs age of its reverence 
and makes it look newer than it is. Not the Coliseum, nor 
the tombs of the Appian Way, nor the oldest pillar in the 
Forum, nor any other Roman ruin, be it as dilapidated as it 
may, ever give the impression of venerable antiquity which 
we gather, along with the ivy, from the gray walls of an 
English abbey or castle. And yet every brick or stone, 
which we pick up among the former, had fallen ages before 
the foundation of the latter was begun. This is owing to 
the kindliness with which Nature takes an English ruin to 
her heart, covering it with ivy, as tenderly as Robin Red- 
breast covered the dead babes with forest leaves. She 
strives to make it a part of herself, gradually obliterating 
the handiwork of man, and supplanting it with her own 
mosses and trailing verdure, till she has won the whole 
structure back. But, in Italy, whenever man has once hewn 
a stone. Nature forthwith relinquishes her right to it, and 
never lays her finger on it again. Age after age finds it 
bare and naked, in the barren sunshine, and leaves it so. 
Besides this natural disadvantage, too, each succeeding cen- 
tury, in Rome, has done its best to ruin the very ruins, so 
far as their picturesque effect is concerned, by stealing 
away the marble and hewn stone, and leaving only yellow 
bricks, which never can look venerable. 

The party ascended the winding way that leads from 
the Forum to the Piazza of the Campidoglio on the sum- 
mit of the Capitoline Hill. They stood awhile to contem- 
plate the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius. The 
moonlight glistened upon traces of the gilding which had 
once covered both rider and steed; these were almost gone, 
but the aspect of dignity was still perfect, clothing the 
figure as it were with an imperial robe of light. It is the 
most majestic representation of the kingly character that 
ever the world has seen. A sight of the old heathen em- 

167 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


peror is enough to create an evanescent sentiment of loyalty 
even in a democratic bosom, so august does he look, so fit to 
rule, so worthy of man’s profoundest homage and obedience, 
so inevitably attractive of his love. He stretches forth his 
hand with an air of grand beneficence and unlimited au- 
thority, as if uttering a decree from which no appeal was 
permissible, but in which the obedient subject would find 
his highest interests consulted ; a command that was in itself 
a benediction. 

“The sculptor of this statue knew what a king should 
be,” observed Kenyon, “and knew, likewise, the heart of 
mankind, and how it craves a true ruler, under whatever 
title, as a child its father.” 

“Oh, if there were but one such man as this I” exclaimed 
Miriam. “One such man in an age, and one in all the 
world; then how speedily would the strife, wickedness, and 
sorrow of us poor creatures be relieved. We would come 
to him with our griefs, whatever they might be, — even a 
poor, frail woman burdened with her heavy heart, — and 
lay them at his feet, and never need to take them up again. 
The rightful king would see to all.” 

“What an idea of the regal office and duty!” said Ken- 
yon, with a smile. “It is a woman’s idea of the whole mat- 
ter to perfection. It is Hilda’s, too, no doubt?” 

“No,” answered the quiet Hilda; “I should never look for 
such assistance from an earthly king.” 

“Hilda, my religious Hilda,” whispered Miriam, sud- 
denly drawing the girl close to her, “do you know how it 
is with me? I would give all I have or hope — my life, oh 
how freely — for one instant of your trust in God! You little 
guess my need of it. You really think, then, that He sees 
and cares for us?” 

“Miriam, you frighten me.” 

“Hush, hush! do not let them hear you!” whispered 
168 


ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE 


Miriam. “I frighten you, you say; for Heaven’s sake, 
how.^ Am I strange.^ is there anything wild in my be- 
havior?” 

“Only for that moment,” replied Hilda, “because you 
seemed to doubt God’s providence.” 

“We will talk of that another time,” said her friend. “Just 
now it is very dark to me.” 

On the left of the Piazza of the Campidoglio, as you 
face cityward, and at the head of the long and stately 
flight of steps descending from the Capitoline Hill to the 
level of lower Rome, there is a narrow lane or passage. 
Into this the party of our friends now turned. The path 
ascended a little, and ran along under the walls of a palace, 
but soon passed through a gateway, and terminated in a 
small paved court-yard. It was bordered by a low parapet. 

The spot, for some reason or other, impressed them as 
exceedingly lonely. On one side was the great height of 
the palace, with the moonshine falling over it, and showing 
all the window’s barred and shuttered. Not a human eye 
could look down into the little court-yard, even if the 
seemingly deserted palace had a tenant. On all other sides 
of its narrow compass there was nothing but the parapet, 
which as it now appeared was built right on the edge of 
a steep precipice. Gazing from its imminent brow, the 
party beheld a crowded confusion of roofs spreading over 
the whole space between them and the line of hills that 
lay beyond the Tiber. A long, misty wreath, just dense 
enough to catch a little of the moonshine, floated above the 
houses, midway towards the hilly line, and showed the 
course of the unseen river. Far away on the right, the 
moon gleamed on the dome of St. Peter’s as well as on many 
lesser and nearer domes. 

“What a beautiful view of the city!” exclaimed Hilda; 
“and I never saw Rome from this point before.” 

169 


ROMANCE OE MONTE BENI 


“It ought to afford a good prospect^” said the sculptor; 
“for it was from this point — at least we are at liberty to 
think soj if we choose — that many a famous Roman caught 
his last glimpse of his native city^ and of all other earthly 
things. This is one of the sides of the Tarpeian Rock. 
Look over the parapet^ and see what a sheer tumble there 
might still be for a traitor, in spite of the thirty feet of soil 
that have accumulated at the foot of the precipice.” 

They all bent over, and saw that the cliff fell perpendicu- 
larly downward to about the depth, or rather more, at 
which the tall palace rose in height above their heads. Not 
that it was still the natural, shaggy front of the original 
precipice; for it appeared to be cased in ancient stone- 
work, through which the primeval rock showed its face 
here and there grimly and doubtfully. Mosses grew on 
the slight projections, and little shrubs sprouted out of the 
crevices, but could not much soften the stern aspect of the 
cliff. Brightly as the Italian moonlight fell a-down the 
height, it scarcely showed what portion of it was man’s 
work, and what was nature’s, but left it all in very much 
the same kind of ambiguity and half-knowledge in which 
antiquarians generally leave the identity of Roman re- 
mains. 

The roofs of some poor-looking houses, which had been 
built against the base and sides of the cliff, rose nearly mid- 
way to the top; but from an angle of the parapet there was 
a precipitous plunge straight downward into a stone-paved 
court. 

“I prefer this to any other site as having been veritably 
the Traitor’s Leap,” said Kenyon, “because it was so con- 
venient to the Capitol. It was an admirable idea of those 
stern old fellows to fling their political criminals down from 
the very summit on which stood the Senate House and Jove’s 
Temple, emblems of the institutions which they sought to 

170 


ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE 


violate. It symbolizes how sudden was the fall in those 
days from the utmost height of ambition to its profoundest 
ruin.” 

“Come^ come; it is midnight,” cried another artist, “too 
late to be moralizing here. We are literally dreaming on 
the edge of a precipice. Let us go home.” 

“It is time, indeed,” said Hilda. 

The sculptor was not without hopes that he might be 
favored with the sweet charge of escorting Hilda to the 
foot of her tower. Accordingly, when the party prepared to 
turn back, he offered her his arm. Hilda at first accepted 
it; but when they had partly threaded the passage between 
the little court-yard and the Piazza del Campidoglio, she 
discovered that Miriam had remained behind. 

“I must go back,” said she, withdrawing her arm from 
Kenyon’s; “but pray do not come with me. Several times 
this evening I have had a fancy that Miriam had something 
on her mind, some sorrow or perplexity, which, perhaps, it 
would relieve her to tell me about. No, no; do not turn 
back! Donatello will be a sufficient guardian for Miriam 
and me.” 

The sculptor was a good deal mortified, and perhaps a 
little angry ; but 'he knew Hilda’s mood of gentle decision 
and independence too well not to obey her. He therefore 
suffered the fearless maiden to return alone. 

Meanwhile Miriam had not noticed the departure of the 
rest of the company; she remained on the edge of the 
precipice and Donatello along with her. 

“It would be a fatal fall, still,” she said to herself, look- 
ing over the parapet, and shuddering as her eye measured 
the depth. “Yes; surely yes! Even without the weight of 
an overburdened heart, a human body would fall heavily 
enough upon those stones to shake all its joints asunder. 
How soon it would be over !” 


171 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


Donatello_, of whose presence she was possibly not aware, 
now pressed closer to her side; and he, too, like Miriam, | 
bent over the low parapet and trembled violently. Yet he 
seemed to feel that perilous fascination which haunts the 
brow of precipices, tempting the unwary one to fling himself 
over for the very horror of the thing, for, after drawing 
hastily back, he again looked dowm, thrusting himself out 
farther than before. He then stood silent a brief space, 
struggling, perhaps, to make himself conscious of the his- 
toric associations of the scene. 

“What are you thinking of, Donatello.^” asked Miriam. 

“Who are they,” said he, looking earnestly in her face, 
“who have been flung over here in days gone by?” 

“Men that cumbered the world,” she replied. “Men whose 
lives were the bane of their fellow-creatures. Men who 
poisoned the air, which is the common breath of all, for 
their own selfish purposes. There was short work with 
such men in old Roman times. Just in the moment of their 
triumph, a hand, as of an avenging giant, clutched them, 
and dashed the wretches down this precipice.” 

“W'as it well done ?” asked the young man. 

“It was well done,” answered Miriam; “innocent persons 
were saved by the destruction of a guilty one, who deserved 
his doom.” 

While this brief conversation passed, Donatello had once 
or twice glanced aside with a watchful air, just as a hound 
may often be seen to take sidelong note of some suspicious 
object, while he gives his more direct attention to something 
nearer at hand. Miriam seemed now first to become aware 
of the silence that had followed upon the cheerful talk and 
laughter of a few moments before. 

Looking round, she perceived that all her company of 
merry friends had retired, and Hilda, too, in whose soft 
and quiet presence she had always an indescribable feeling 

172 


ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE 


of security. All gone ; and only herself and Donatello left 
hanging over the brow of the ominous precipice. 

Not so_, however; not entirely alone! In the basement 
wall of the palace, shaded from the moon, there was a deep, 
empty niche, that had probably once contained a statue; 
not empty, either; for a figure now came forth from it and 
approached Miriam. She must have had cause to dread 
some unspeakable evil from this strange persecutor, and 
to know that this was the very crisis of her calamity; for, 
as he drew near, such a cold, sick despair crept over her, that 
it impeded her breath, and benumbed her natural promp- 
titude of thought. Miriam seemed dreamily to remember 
falling on her knees; but, in her whole recollection of that 
wild moment, she beheld herself as in a dim show, and could 
not well distinguish what was done and sufF ered ; no, not even 
whether she were really an actor and sufF erer in the scene. 

Hilda, meanwhile, had separated herself from the sculp- 
tor, and turned back to rejoin her friend. At a distance, 
she still heard the mirth of her late companions, who were 
going down the cityward descent of the Capitoline Hill; 
they had set up a new stave of melody, in which her own 
soft voice, as well as the powerful sweetness of Miriam’s, 
was sadly missed. 

The door of the little court-yard had swung upon its 
hinges, and partly closed itself. Hilda (whose native gen- 
tleness pervaded all her movements) was quietly opening 
it, when she was startled, midway, by the noise of a strug- 
gle within, beginning and ending all in one breathless in- 
stant. Along with it, or closely succeeding it, was a loud, 
fearful cry, which quivered upward through the air, and 
sank quivering downward to the earth. Then, a silence ! 
Poor Hilda had looked into the court-yard, and saw the 
whole quick passage of a deed, which took but that little 
time to grave itself in the eternal adamant. 

173 


CHAPTER XIX 


The Faun's Transformation 

The door of the court-yard swung slowly, and closed 
itself of its own accord. Miriam and Donatello were now 
alone there. She clasped her hands, and looked wildly 
at the young man, whose form seemed to have dilated, and 
whose eyes blazed with the fierce energy that had suddenly 
inspired him. It had kindled him into a man; it had de- 
veloped within him an intelligence which was no native 
characteristic of the Donatello whom we have heretofore 
known. But that simple and joyous creature was gone for- 
ever. 

“What have you done.^’" said Miriam, in a horror-stricken 
whisper. 

The glow of rage was still lurid on Donatello’s face, and 
now flashed out again from his eyes. 

“I did what ought to be done to a traitor!” he replied. 
“I did what your eyes bade me do, when I asked them 
with mine, as I held the wretch over the precipice !” 

These last words struck Miriam like a bullet. Could it 
be so.^ Had her eyes provoked or assented to this deed.^ 
She had not known it. But, alas! looking back into the 
frenzy and turmoil of the scene just acted, she could not 
deny — she was not sure whether it might be so, or no — that 
a wild joy had flamed up in her heart, when she beheld her 
persecutor in his mortal peril. Was it horror? — or ecstasy? 
— or both in one? Be the emotion what it might, it had 
blazed up more madly, when Donatello flung his victim off 

174 


THE FAUN’S TRANSFORMATION 


the cliiF, and more and more, while his shriek went quivering 
downward. With the dead thump upon the stones below, 
had come an unutterable horror. 

“And my eyes bade you do it I” repeated she. 

They both leaned over the parapet, and gazed downward 
as earnestly as if some inestimable treasure had fallen over, 
and were yet recoverable. On the pavement, below, was a 
dark mass, lying in a heap, with little or nothing human 
in its appearance, except that the hands were stretched 
out, as if they might have clutched, for a moment, at the 
small square stones. But there was no motion in them now. 
Miriam watched the heap of mortality while she could count 
a hundred, which she took pains to do. No stir; not a finger 
moved ! 

“You have killed him, Donatello! He is quite dead!” 
said she. “Stone dead! Would I were so, too!” 

“Did you not mean that he should die.^” sternly asked 
Donatello, still in the glow of that intelligence which pas- 
sion had developed in him. “There was short time to weigh 
the matter ; but he had his trial in that breath or two while 
I held him over the cliff, and his sentence in that one 
glance, when your eyes responded to mine ! Say that I have 
slain him against your will, — say that he died without your 
whole consent, — and, in another breath, you shall see me 
lying beside him.” 

“Oh, never!” cried Miriam. “My one, own friend! 
Never, never, never!” 

She turned to him, — ^the guilty, blood-stained, lonely 
woman, — she turned to her fellow-criminal, the youth, so 
lately innocent, whom she had drawn into her doom. She 
pressed him close, close to her bosom, with a clinging em- 
brace that brought their two hearts together, till the horror 
and agony of each was combined into one emotion, and that 
a kind of rapture. 


175 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


"Yes, Donatello, you speak the truth!” said she; "my 
heart consented to what you did. We two slew yonder 
wretch. The deed knots us together, for time and eternity, 
like the coil of a serpent !” 

They threw one other glance at the heap of death below, 
to assure themselves that it was there; so like a dream was 
the whole thing. Then they turned from that fatal preci- 
pice, and came out of the court-yard, arm in arm, heart in 
heart. Instinctively, they were heedful not to sever them- 
selves so much as a pace or two from one another, for fear 
of the terror and deadly chill that would thenceforth wait 
for them in solitude. Their deed — the crime which Dona- 
tello wrought, and Miriam accepted on the instant — had 
wreathed itself, as she said, like a serpent, in inextricable 
links about both their souls, and drew them into one, by its 
terrible contractile power. It was closer than a marriage- 
bond. So intimate, in those first moments, was the union, 
that it seemed as if their new sympathy annihilated all 
other ties, and that they were released from the chain of 
humanity; a new sphere, a special law, had been created 
for them alone. The world could not come near them; they 
were safe! 

When they reached the flight of steps leading downward 
from the Capitol, there was a far-off noise of singing and 
laughter. Swift, indeed, had been the rush of the crisis 
that was come and gone! This was still the merriment of 
the party that had so recently been their companions. They 
recognized the voices which, a little while ago, had accorded 
and sung in cadence with their own. But they were familiar 
voices no more; they sounded strangely, and, as it were, 
out of the depths of space ; so remote was all that pertained 
to the past life of these guilty ones, in the moral seclusion 
that had suddenly extended itself around them. But how 
close, and ever closer, did the breath of the immeasurable 

176 


THE FAUN’S TRANSFORMATION 


waste, that lay between them and all brotherhood or sister- 
hood, now press them one within the other ! 

“O friend!” cried Miriam, so putting her soul into the 
word that it took a heavy richness of meaning, and seemed 
never to have been spoken before, — “O friend, are you 
conscious, as I am, of this companionship that knits our 
heart-strings together?” 

“I feel it, Miriam,” said Donatello. *‘We draw one 
breath; we live one life!” 

“Only yesterday,” continued Miriam; “nay, only a short 
half-hour ago, I shivered in an icy solitude. No friendship, 
no sisterhood, could come near enough to keep the warmth 
within my heart. In an instant, all is changed! There 
can be no more loneliness !” 

“None, Miriam!” said Donatello. 

“None, my beautiful one!” responded Miriam, gazing 
in his face, which had taken a higher, almost an heroic 
aspect, from the strength of passion. “None, my innocent 
one! Surely, it is no crime that we have committed. One 
wretched and worthless life has been sacrificed to cement 
two other lives for evermore.” 

“For evermore, Miriam!” said Donatello; “cemented with 
his blood!” 

The young man started at the word which he had himself 
spoken ; it may be that it brought home, to the simplicity of 
his imagination, what he had not before dreamed of, — 
the ever-increasing loathsomeness of a union that consists 
in guilt. Cemented with blood, which would corrupt and 
grow more noisome forever and forever, but bind them 
none the less strictly for that. 

“Forget it! Cast it all behind you!” said Miriam, detect- 
ing, by her sympathy, the pang that was in his heart. “The 
deed has done its office, and has no existence any more.” 

They flung the past behind them, as she counselled, or 

177 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


else distilled from it a fiery intoxication, which sufficed to 
carry them triumphantly through those first moments of 
their doom. For, guilt has its moment of rapture too. The 
foremost result of a broken law is ever an ecstatic sense 
of freedom. And thus there exhaled upward (out of their 
dark sympathy, at the base of which lay a human corpse) 
a bliss, or an insanity, which the unhappy pair imagined to 
be well worth the sleepy innocence that was forever lost to 
them. 

As their spirits rose to the solemn madness of the occa- 
sion, they went onward, — not stealthily, not fearfully, — 
but with a stately gait and aspect. Passion lent them (as 
it does to meaner shapes) its brief nobility of carriage. 
They trod through the streets of Rome, as if they, too, were 
among the majestic and guilty shadows, that, from ages 
long gone by, have haunted the blood-stained city. And 
at Miriam’s suggestion, they turned aside, for the sake of 
treading loftily past the old site of Pompey’s Forum. 

“For there was a great deed done here!” she said, — “a 
deed of blood like ours ! Who knows, but we may meet 
the high and ever-sad fraternity of Caesar’s murderers, and 
exchange a salutation.^” 

“Are they our brethren, now?” asked Donatello. 

“Yes; all of them,” said Miriam; “and many another, 
whom the world little dreams of, has been made our brother 
or our sister, by what we have done within this hour !” 

And, at the thought, she shivered. Where, then, was 
the seclusion, the remoteness, the strange, lonesome Para- 
dise, into which she and her one companion had been trans- 
ported by their crime? Was there, indeed, no such refuge, 
but only a crowded thoroughfare and jostling throng of 
criminals? And was it true, that whatever hand had a 
blood-stain on it, — or had poured out poison, — or strangled 
a babe at its birth, — or clutched a grandsire’s throat, he 

178 


THE FAUN’S TRANSFORMATION 

sleeping, and robbed him of his few last breaths, — ^had 
now the right to offer itself in fellowship with their two 
hands? Too certainly, that right existed. It is a terrible 
thought, that an individual wrong-doing melts into the 
great mass of human crime, and makes us, — who dreamed 
only of our own little separate sin, — makes us guilty of the 
whole. And thus Miriam and her lover were not an in- 
sulated pair, but members of an innumerable confraternity 
of guilty ones, all shuddering at each other. 

“But not now; not yet,” she murmured to herself. “To- 
night, at least, there shall be no remorse !” 

Wandering without a purpose, it so chanced that they 
turned into a street, at one extremity of which stood Hilda's 
tower. There was a light in her high chamber; a light, 
too, at the Virgin’s shrine; and the glimmer of these two was 
the loftiest light beneath the stars. Miriam drew Donatello’s 
arm, to make him stop, and while they stood at some dis- 
tance looking at Hilda’s window, they beheld her approach 
and throw it open. She leaned far forth, and extended 
her clasped hands towards the sky. 

“The good, pure child ! She is praying, Donatello,” said 
Miriam, with a kind of simple joy at witnessing the devout- 
ness of her friend. Then her own sin rushed upon her, 
and she shouted, with the rich strength of her voice, “Pray 
for us, Hilda; we need it!” 

Whether Hilda heard and recognized the voice we can- 
not tell. The window was immediately closed, and her 
form disappeared from behind the snowy curtain. Miriam 
felt this to be a token that the cry of her condemned spirit 
was shut out of heaven. 


179 


CHAPTER XX 
The Burial Chant 

The Church of the Capuchins (where, as the reader may 
remember, some of our acquaintances had made an engage- 
ment to meet) stands a little aside from the Piazza Bar- 
berini. Thither, at the hour agreed upon, on the morning 
after the scenes last described, Miriam and Donatello 
directed their steps. At no time are people so sedulously 
careful to keep their trifling appointments, attend to their 
ordinary occupations, and thus put a commonplace aspect 
on life, as when conscious of some secret that if suspected 
would make them look monstrous in the general eye. 

Yet how tame and wearisome is the impression of all 
ordinary things in the contrast with such a f act ! How sick 
and tremulous, the next morning, is the spirit that has dared 
so much only the night before! How icy cold is the heart, 
when the fervor, the wild ecstasy of passion, has faded 
away, and sunk down among the dead ashes of the fire that 
blazed so fiercely, and was fed by the very substance of its 
life! How faintly does the criminal stagger onward, lack- 
ing the impulse of that strong madness that hurried him into 
guilt, and treacherously deserts him in the midst of it ! 

When Miriam and Donatello drew near the church, they 
found only Kenyon awaiting them on the steps. Hilda had 
likewise promised to be of the party, but had not yet ap- 
peared. Meeting the sculptor, Miriam put a force upon 
herself and succeeded in creating an artificial flow of spirits, 
which, to any but the nicest observation, was quite as effec- 

180 


THE BURIAL CHANT 


tive as a natural one. She spoke sympatliizingly to the 
sculptor on the subject of Hilda’s absence, and somewhat 
annoyed him by alluding in Donatello’s hearing to an at- 
tachment which had never been openly avowed, though per- 
haps plainly enough betrayed. He fancied that Miriam 
did not quite recognize the limits of the strictest delicacy; 
he even went so far as to generalize, and conclude within 
himself, that this deficiency is a more general failing in 
woman than in man, the highest refinement being a mascu- 
line attribute. 

But the idea was unjust to the sex at large, and especially 
so to this poor Miriam, who was hardly responsible for her 
frantic efforts to be gay. Possibly, moreover, the nice action 
of the mind is set ajar by any violent shock, as of great mis- 
fortune or great crime, so that the finer perceptions may 
be blurred thenceforth, and the eflect be traceable in all the 
minutest conduct of life. 

“Did you see anything of the dear child after you left 
us.^” asked Miriam, still keeping Hilda as her topic of con- 
versation. “I missed her sadly on my way homeward; for 
nothing insures me such delightful and innocent dreams (I 
have experienced it twenty times) as a talk late in the even- 
ing with Hilda.” 

“So I should imagine,” said the sculptor, gravely; “but it 
is an advantage that I have little or no opportunity of en- 
joying. I know not what became of Hilda after my parting 
from you. She was not especially my companion in any 
part of our walk. The last I saw of her she was hastening 
back to rejoin you in the court-yard of the Palazzo Caf- 
farelli.” 

“Impossible !” cried Miriam, starting. 

“Then did you not see her again inquired Kenyon, in 
some alarm. 

“Not there,” answered Miriam, quietly; “indeed I fol- 
181 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


lowed pretty closely on the heels of the rest of the party. 
But do not be alarmed on Hilda’s account; the Virgin is 
bound to watch over the good child^ for the sake of the piety 
with which she keeps the lamp alight at her shrine. And, 
besides, I have always felt that Hilda is just as safe in these 
evil streets of Rome as her white doves when they fly down- 
wards from the tower-top, and run to and fro among the 
horses’ feet. There is certainly a providence on purpose 
for Hilda, if for no other human creature.” 

*T religiously believe it,” rejoined the sculptor; “and yet 
my mind would be the easier, if I knew that she had re- 
turned safely to her tower.” 

“Then make yourself quite easy,” answered Miriam. “I 
saw her (and it is the last sweet sight that I remember) 
leaning from her window midway between earth and sky!” 

Kenyon now looked at Donatello. 

“You seem out of spirits, my dear friend,” he observed. 
“This languid Roman atmosphere is not the airy wine that 
you were accustomed to breathe at home. I have not for- 
gotten your hospitable invitation to meet you this summer 
at your castle among the Apennines. It is my fixed purpose 
to come, I assure you. We shall both be the better for some 
deep draughts of the mountain-breezes.” 

“It may be,” said Donatello, with unwonted sombreness; 
“the old house seemed joyous when I was a child. But as 
I remember it now it was a grim place, too.” 

The sculptor looked more attentively at the young man, 
and was surprised and alarmed to observe how entirely the 
fine, fresh glow of animal spirits had departed out of his 
face. Hitherto, moreover, even while he was standing per- 
fectly still, there had been a kind of possible gambol indi- 
cated in his aspect. It was quite gone now. All his youth- 
ful gayety, and with it his simplicity of manner, was 
eclipsed, if not utterly extinct. 

182 


THE BURIAL CHANT 


“You are surely ill, my dear fellow,” exclaimed Kenyon. 

“Am Perhaps so,” said Donatello indifferently; “I 
never have been ill, and know not what it may be.” 

“Do not make the poor lad fancy-sick,” whispered Mir- 
iam, pulling the sculptor's sleeve. “He is of a nature to lie 
down and die at once, if he finds himself drawing such mel- 
ancholy breaths as we ordinary people are enforced to 
burden our lungs withal. But we must get him away from 
this old, dreamy, and dreary Rome, where nobody but him- 
self ever thought of being gay. Its influences are too heavy 
to sustain the life of such a creature.” 

The above conversation had passed chiefly on the steps of 
the Cappuccini ; and, having said so much, Miriam lifted the 
leathern curtain that hangs before all church-doors in Italy. 

“Hilda has forgotten her appointment,” she observed, 
“or else her maiden slumbers are very sound this morning. 
We will wait for her no longer.” 

They entered the nave. The interior of the church was of 
moderate compass, but of good architecture, with a vaulted 
roof over the nave, and a row of dusky chapels on either side 
of it instead of the customary side-aisles. Each chapel had 
its saintly shrine, hung round with offerings; its picture 
above the altar, although closely veiled, if by any painter 
of renown; and its hallowed tapers, burning continually, to 
set alight the devotion of the worshippers. The pavement 
of -the nave was chiefly of marble, and looked old and 
broken, and was shabbily patched here and there with tiles 
of brick; it was inlaid, moreover, with tombstones of the 
mediaeval taste, on which were quaintly sculptured borders, 
figures, and portraits in bas-relief, and Latin epitaphs, now 
grown illegible by the tread of footsteps over them. The 
church appertains to a convent of Capuchin monks; and, as 
usually happens when a reverend brotherhood have such an 
edifice in charge, the floor seemed never to have been 

183 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


scrubbed or swept^ and had as little the aspect of sanctity 
as a kennel; whereas^ in all churches of nunneries, the 
maiden sisterhood invariably show the purity of their own 
hearts by the virgin cleanliness and visible consecration of 
the walls and pavement. 

As our friends entered the church, their eyes rested at 
once on a remarkable object in the centre of the nave. It 
was either the actual body, or, as might rather have been 
supposed at first glance, the cunningly wrought waxen face 
and suitably draped figure of a dead monk. This image of 
wax or clay-cold reality, whichever it might be, lay on a 
slightly elevated bier, with three tall candles burning on 
each side, another tall candle at the head, and another at 
the foot. There was music> too, in harmony with so fune- 
real a spectacle. From beneath the pavement of the church 
came the deep, lugubrious strain of a De Profundis, which 
sounded like an utterance of the tomb itself ; so dismally did 
it rumble through the burial-vaults, and ooze up among the 
flat gravestones and sad epitaphs, filling the church as with 
a gloomy mist. 

“I must look more closely at that dead monk before we 
leave the church,” remarked the sculptor. “In the study of 
my art, I have gained many a hint from the dead, which the 
living could never have given me.” 

“I can well imagine it,” answered Miriam. “One clay 
image is readily copied from another. But let us first see 
Guidons picture. The light is favorable now.” 

Accordingly, they turned into the first chapel on the right 
hand, as you enter the nave ; and there they beheld, — ^not the 
picture, indeed, — ^but a closely drawn curtain. The church- 
men of Italy make no scruple of sacrificing the very purpose 
for which a work of sacred art has been created; that of 
opening the way for religious sentiment through the quick 
medium of sight, by bringing angels, saints, and martyrs 

184 - 


THE BURIAL CHANT 


do’vvTi visibly upon earth; of sacrificing this high purpose, 
and, for aught they know, the welfare of many souls along 
with it, to the hope of a paltry fee. Every work by an artist 
of celebrity is hidden behind a veil, and seldom revealed, 
except to Protestants, who scorn it as an object of devotion, 
and value it only for its artistic merit. 

The sacristan was quickly found, however, and lost no 
time in disclosing the youthful Archangel, setting his di- 
vine foot on the head of his fallen adversary. It was an 
image of that greatest of future events, which we hope for 
so ardently, — at least, while we are young, — but find so 
very long in coming, — the triumph of goodness over the 
evil principle. 

“Where can Hilda be.^” exclaimed Kenyon. “It is not 
her custom ever to fail in an engagement; and the present 
one was made entirely on her account. Except herself, you 
know, we were all agreed in our recollection of the picture.” 

“But we were wrong, and Hilda right, as you perceive,” 
said Miriam, directing his attention to the point on which 
their dispute of the night before had arisen. “It is not easy 
to detect her astray as regards any picture on which those 
clear, soft eyes of hers have ever rested.” 

“And she has studied and admired few pictures so much 
as this,” observed the sculptor. “No wonder; for there is 
hardly another so beautiful in the world. What an expres- 
sion of heavenly severity in the Archangel’s face! There 
is a degree of pain, trouble, and disgust at being brought 
in contact with sin, even for the purpose of quelling and 
punishing it; and yet a celestial tranquillity pervades his 
whole being.” 

“I have never been able,” said Miriam, “to admire this 
picture nearly so much as Hilda does, in its moral and in- 
tellectual aspect. If it cost her more trouble to be good, if 
her soul were less white and pure, she would be a more com- 

185 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


petent critic of this picture^ and would estimate it not half 
so high. I see its defects to-day more clearly than ever be- 
fore,” 

“What are some of them?” asked Kenyon. 

“That Archangel, now,” Miriam continued; “how fair he 
looks, with his unruffled wings, with his unhacked sword, and 
clad in his bright armor, and that exquisitely fitting sky-blue 
tunic, cut in the latest Paradisiacal mode! What a dainty 
air of the first celestial society! With what half -scornful 
delicacy he sets his prettily sandalled foot on the head of his 
prostrate foe! But, is it thus that virtue looks the moment 
after its death-struggle with evil? No, no; I could have 
told Guido better. A full third of the Archangel’s feathers 
should have been torn from his wings; the rest all ruffled, 
till they looked like Satan’s own! His sword sliould be 
streaming with blood, and perhaps broken half-way to the 
hilt; his armor crushed, his robes rent, his breast gory; a 
bleeding gash on his brow, cutting right across the stern 
scowl of battle! He should press his foot hard down upon 
the old serpent, as if his very soul depended upon it, feeling 
him squirm mightily, and doubting whether the fight were 
half over yet, and how the victory might turn! And, with 
all this fierceness, this grimness, this unutterable horror, 
there should still be something high, tender, and holy in 
Michael’s eyes, and around his mouth. But the battle never 
was such child’s play as Guido’s dapper Archangel seems 
to have found it.” 

“For Heaven’s sake, Miriam,” cried Kenyon, astonished 
at the wild energy of her talk; “paint the picture of man’s 
struggle against sin according to your own idea! I think 
it will be a masterpiece.” 

“The picture would have its share of truth, I assure you,” 
she answered; “but I am sadly afraid the victory would 
fall on the wrong side. Just fancy a smoke-blackened, fiery- 

186 


THE BURIAL CHANT 


eyed demon, bestriding that nice young angel, clutching his 
white throat with one of his hinder claws; and giving a 
triumphant whisk of his scaly tail, with a poisonous dart at 
the end of it! That is what they risk, poor souls, who do 
battle with Michael’s enemy.” 

It now, perhaps, struck Miriam that her mental dis- 
quietude was impelling her to an undue vivacity; for she 
paused, and turned away from the picture, without saying 
a word more about it. All this while, moreover, Donatello 
had been very ill at ease, casting awe-stricken and inquiring 
glances at the dead monk; as if he could look nowhere but 
at that ghastly object, merely because it shocked him. 
Death has probably a peculiar horror and ugliness, when 
forced upon the contemplation of a person so naturally 
joyous as Donatello, who lived with completeness in the 
present moment, and was able to form but vague images of 
the future. 

“What is the matter, Donatello.^” whispered Miriam, 
soothingly. “You are quite in a tremble, my- poor friend! 
What is itr 

“This awful chant from beneath the church,” answered 
Donatello; “it oppresses me; the air is so heavy with it that 
I can scarcely draw my breath. And yonder dead monk! 
I feel as if he were lying right across my heart.” 

“Take courage!” whispered she again; “come, we will 
approach close to the dead monk. The only way, in such 
cases, is to stare the ugly horror right in the face; never a 
sidelong glance, nor half-look, for those are what show a 
frightful thing in its frightfulest aspect. Lean on me, 
dearest friend! My heart is very strong for both of us. 
Be brave; and all is well.” 

Donatello hung back for a moment, but then pressed close 
to Miriam’s side, and suff ered her to lead him up to the bier. 
The sculptor followed. A number of persons, chiefly 

187 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


women, with several children among them, were standing 
about the corpse; and as our three friends drew nigh, a 
mother knelt down, and caused her little boy to kneel, both 
kissing the beads and crucifix that hung from the monk’s 
girdle. Possibly he had died in the odor of sanctity; or, 
at all events, death and his brown frock and cowl made a 
sacred image of this reverend father. 


188 


CHAPTER XXI 
The Dead Capuchin 

The dead monk was clad, as when alive, in the brown 
woollen frock of the Capuchins, with the hood drawn over 
his head, but so as to leave the features and a portion of the 
beard uncovered. His rosary and cross hung at his side; 
his hands were folded over his breast; his feet (he was of 
a barefooted order in his lifetime, and continued so in 
death) protruded from beneath his habit, stiff and stark, 
with a more waxen look than even his face. They were 
tied together at the ankles with a black ribbon. 

The countenance, as we have already said, was fully dis- 
played. It had a purplish hue upon it, unlike the paleness 
of an ordinary corpse, but as little resembling the flush of 
natural life. The eyelids were but partially drawn down, 
and showed the eyeballs beneath; as if the deceased friar 
were stealing a glimpse at the by-standers, to watch whether 
they were duly impressed with the solemnity of his obse- 
quies. The shaggy eyebrows gave sternness to the look. 

Miriam passed between two of the lighted candles, and 
stood close beside the bier. 

*‘My God!’" murmured she. “What is this?” 

She grasped Donatello’s hand, and, at the same instant, 
felt him give a convulsive shudder, which she knew to have 
been caused by a sudden and terrible throb of the heart. 
His hand, by an instantaneous change, became like ice 
within hers, which likewise grew so icy, that their insensible 
fingers might have rattled, one against the other. No won- 

189 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


der that their blood curdled; no wonder that their hearts 
leaped and paused! The dead face of the monk^ gazing 
at them beneath its half-closed eyelids, was the same visage 
that had glared upon their naked souls, the past midnight, 
as Donatello flung him over the precipice. 

The sculptor was standing at the foot of the bier, and had 
not yet seen the monk’s features. 

“Those naked feet!” said he. “I know not why, but they 
aff*ect me strangely. They have walked to and fro over 
the hard pavements of Rome, and through a hundred other 
rough ways of this life, where the monk went begging for 
his brotherhood; along the cloisters and dreary corridors of 
his convent, too, from his youth upward! It is a suggestive 
idea, to track those worn feet backward through all the 
paths they have trodden, ever since they were the tender 
and rosy little feet of a baby, and (cold as they now are} 
were kept warm in his mother’s hand.” 

As his companions, whom the sculptor supposed to be 
close by him, made no response to his fanciful musing, he 
looked up, and saw them at the head of the bier. He ad- 
vanced thither himself. 

“Ha!” exclaimed he. 

He cast a horror-stricken and bewildered glance at 
Miriam, but withdrew it immediately. Not that he had any 
definite suspicion, or, it may be, even a remote idea, that 
she could be held responsible, in the least degree, for this 
man’s sudden death. In truth, it seemed too wild a thought 
to connect, in reality, Miriam’s persecutor of many past 
months and the vagabond of the preceding night, with the 
dead Capuchin of to-day. It resembled one of those unac- 
countable changes and interminglings of identity, which so 
often occur among the personages of a dream. But Ken- 
yon, as befitted the professor of an imaginative art, was en- 
dowed with an exceedingly quick sensibility, which was apt 

190 


THE DEAD CAPUCHIN 


to give him intimations of the true state of matters that lay 
beyond his actual vision. There was a whisper in his ear; 
it said, “Hush!” Without asking himself wherefore, he 
resolved to be silent as regarded the mysterious discovery 
which he had made, and to leave any remark or exclamation 
to be voluntarily offered by Miriam. If she never spoke, 
then let the riddle be unsolved. 

And now occurred a circumstance that would seem too 
fantastic to be told, if it had not actually happened, pre- 
cisely as we set it down. As the three friends stood by the 
bier, they saw that a little stream of blood had begun to 
ooze from the dead monk’s nostrils ; it crept slowly towards 
the thicket of his beard, where, in the course of a moment 
or two, it hid itself. 

“How strange! ’ ejaculated Kenyon. “The monk died of 
apoplexy, I suppose, or by some sudden accident, and the 
blood has not yet congealed.” 

“Do you consider that a sufficient explanation?” asked 
Miriam, with a smile from which the sculptor involuntarily 
turned away his eyes. “Does it satisfy you?” 

“And why not?” he inquired. 

“Of course, you know the old superstition about this 
phenomenon of blood flowing from a dead body,” she re- 
joined. “How can we tell but that the murderer of this 
monk (or, possibly, it may be only that privileged murderer, 
his physician) may have just entered the church?” 

“I cannot jest about it,” said Kenyon. “It is an ugly 
sight !” 

“True, true; horrible to see, or dream of!” she replied, 
with one of those long, tremulous sighs, which so often be- 
tray a sick heart by escaping unexpectedly. “We will not 
look at it any more. Come away, Donatello. Let us escape 
from this dismal church. The sunshine will do you good.” 

Wlien had ever a woman such a trial to sustain as this ! 

191 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


By no possible supposition could Miriam explain the identity 
of the dead Capuchin, quietly and decorously laid out in the 
nave of his convent church, with that of her murdered perse- 
cutor, flung heedlessly at the foot of the precipice. The 
eff' ect upon her imagination was as if a strange and unknown 
corpse had miraculously, while she was gazing at it, assumed 
the likeness of that face, so terrible henceforth in her re- 
membrance. It was a symbol, perhaps, of the deadly itera- 
tion with which she was doomed to behold the image of her 
crime reflected back upon her in a thousand ways, and con- 
verting the great, calm face of Nature, in the whole, and in 
its innumerable details, into a manifold reminiscence of that 
one dead visage. 

No sooner had Miriam turned away from the bier, and 
gone a few steps, than she fancied the likeness altogether 
an illusion, which would vanish at a closer and colder view. 
She must look at it again, therefore, and at once; or else the 
grave would close over the face, and leave the awful fantasy 
that had connected itself therewith fixed ineff’aceably in her 
brain. 

“Wait for me, one moment!” she said to her companions. 
“Only a moment !” 

So she went back, and gazed once more at the corpse. 
Yes; these were the features that Miriam had known so 
well; this was the visage that she remembered from a far 
longer date than the most intimate of her friends suspected; 
this form of clay had held the evil spirit which blasted her 
sweet youth, and compelled her, as it were, to stain her 
womanhood with crime. But, whether it were the majesty 
of death, or something originally noble and lofty in the 
character of the dead, which the soul had stamped upon the 
features, as it left them; so it was that Miriam now quailed 
and shook, not for the vulgar horror of the spectacle, but 
for the severe, reproachful glance that seemed to come from 

192 


THE DEAD CAPUCHIN 


between those half-elosed lids. True, there had been 
nothing, in his lifetime, viler than this man. She knew it; 
there was no other fact within her consciousness that she 
felt to be so certain; and yet, because her persecutor found 
himself safe and irrefutable in death, he frowned upon his 
victim, and threw back the blame on her ! 

“Is it thou, indeed.^” she murmured, under her breath. 
“Then thou hast no right to scowl upon me so! But art 
thou real, or a vision?” 

She bent down over the dead monk, till one of her rich 
curls brushed against his forehead. She touched one of his 
folded hands with her finger. 

“It is he,” said Miriam. “There is the scar, that I know 
so well, on his brow. And it is no vision ; he is palpable to 
my touch ! I will question the fact no longer, but deal with 
it as I best can.” 

It was wonderful to see how the crisis developed in 
Miriam its own proper strength, and the faculty of sustain- 
ing the demands which it made upon her fortitude. She 
ceased to tremble ; the beautiful woman gazed sternly at her 
dead enemy, endeavoring to meet and quell the look of ac- 
cusation that he threw from between his half-closed eyelids. 

“No; thou shalt not scowl me down!” said she. “Neither 
now, nor when we stand together at the judgment-seat. I 
fear not to meet thee there. Farewell, till that next en- 
counter !” 

Haughtily waving her hand, Miriam rejoined her friends, 
who were awaiting her at the door of the church. As they 
went out, the sacristan stopped them, and proposed to show 
the cemetery of the convent, where the deceased members of 
the fraternity are laid to rest in sacred earth, brought long 
ago from Jerusalem. 

“And will yonder monk be buried there?” she asked. 

“Brother Antonio?” exclaimed the sacristan. “Surely, 

193 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


our good brother will be put to bed there! His grave is 
already dug, and the last occupant has made room for him. 
Will you look at it, signorina?” 

“I will!” said Miriam. 

“Then excuse me,” observed Kenyon; “for I shall leave 
you. One dead monk has more than sufficed me; and I am 
not bold enough to face the whole mortality of the convent.” 

It was easy to see, by Donatello’s looks, that he, as well 
as the sculptor, would gladly have escaped a visit to the fa- 
mous cemetery of the Cappuccini. But Miriam’s nerves 
were strained to such a pitch, that she anticipated a certain 
solace and absolute relief in passing from one ghastly spec- 
tacle to another of long-accumulated ugliness ; and there was, 
besides, a singular sense of duty which impelled her to look 
at the final resting-place of the being whose fate had been 
so disastrously involved with her own. She therefore fol- 
lowed the sacristan’s guidance, and drew her companion 
along with her, whispering encouragement as they went. 

The cemetery is beneath the church, but entirely above 
ground, and lighted by a row of iron-grated windows with- 
out glass. A corridor runs along beside these windows, and 
gives access to three or four vaulted recesses, or chapels, of 
considerable breadth and height, the floor of which consists 
of the consecrated earth of Jerusalem. It is smoothed deco- 
rously over the deceased brethren of the convent, and is kept 
quite free from grass or weeds, such as would grow even in 
these gloomy recesses, if pains were not bestowed to root 
them up. But, as the cemetery is small, and it is a precious 
privilege to sleep in holy ground, the brotherhood are im- 
memorially accustomed, when one of their number dies, to 
take the longest-buried skeleton out of the oldest grave, and 
lay the new slumberer there instead. Thus, each of the good 
friars, in his turn, enjoys the luxury of a consecrated bed, 
attended with the slight drawback of being forced to get 

194 


THE DEAD CAPUCHIN 


up long before daybreak, as it were, and make room for 
another lodger. 

The arrangement of the unearthed skeletons is what 
makes the special interest of the cemetery. The arched 
and vaulted walls of the burial recesses are supported by 
massive pillars and pilasters made of thigh-bones and skulls ; 
the whole material of the structure appears to be of a similar 
kind ; and the knobs and embossed ornaments of this strange 
architecture are represented by the joints of the spine, and 
the more delicate tracery by the smaller bones of the human 
frame. The summits of the arches are adorned with entire 
skeletons, looking as if they were wrought most skilfully in 
bas-relief. There is no possibility of describing how ugly 
and grotesque is the effect, combined with a certain artistic 
merit, nor how much perverted ingenuity has been shown in 
this queer way, nor what a multitude of dead monks, through 
how many hundred years, must have contributed their bony 
framework to build up these great arches of mortality. On 
some of the skulls there are inscriptions, purporting that 
such a monk, who formerly made use of that particular 
headpiece, died on such a day and year; but vastly the 
greater number are piled up indistinguishably into the archi- 
tectural design, like the many deaths that make up the one 
glory of a victory. 

In the side walls of the vaults are niches where skeleton 
monks sit or stand, clad in the brown habits that they wore 
in life, and labelled with their names and the dates of their 
decease. Their skulls (some quite bare, and others still 
covered with yellow skin, and hair that has known the earth- 
damps) look out from beneath their hoods, grinning hide- 
ously repulsive. One reverend father has his mouth wide 
open, as if he had died in the midst of a howl of terror and 
remorse, which perhaps is even now screeching through 
eternity. As a general thing, however, these f rocked and 

195 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


hooded skeletons seem to take a more cheerful view of their 
position^ and try with ghastly smiles to turn it into a jest. 
But the cemetery of the Capuchins is no place to nourish 
celestial hopes: the soul sinks forlorn and wretched under all ' 
this burden of dusty death; the holy earth from Jerusalem, 
so imbued is it with mortality, has grown as barren of the 
flowers of Paradise as it is of earthly weeds and grass. 
Thank Heaven for its blue sky; it needs a long, upward 
gaze to give us back our faith. Not here can we feel our- 
selves immortal, where the very altars in these chapels of 
horrible consecration are heaps of human bones. 

Yet let us give the cemetery the praise that it deserves. 
There is no disagreeable scent, such as might have been ex- 
pected from the decay of so many holy persons, in whatever 
odor of sanctity they may have taken their departure. The 
same number of living monks would not smell half so un- i 
exceptionably. ! 

Miriam went gloomily along the corridor, from one j 
vaulted Golgotha to another, until in the farthest recess she i 
beheld an open grave. j 

“Is that for him who lies yonder in the nave.^” she asked. 
“Yes, signorina, this is to be the resting-place of Brother i 
Antonio, who came to his death last night,” answered the | 
sacristan; “and in yonder niche, you see, sits a brother who ( 
was buried thirty years ago, and has risen to give him i 
place.” j 

“It is not a satisfactory idea,” observed Miriam, “that you 
poor friars cannot call even your graves permanently your I 
own. You must lie down in them, methinks, with a nervous 
anticipation of being disturbed, like weary men who know j 
that they shall be summoned out of bed at midnight. Is it ' 
not possible (if money were to be paid for the privilege) to I 
leave Brother Antonio — if that be his name — in the occu- j 
pancy of that narrow grave till the last trumpet sounds?” 

196 i 


THE DEAD CAPUCHIN 


“By no means^ signorina; neither is it needful or desir- 
able,” answered the sacristan. “A quarter of a century’s 
sleep in the sweet earth of Jerusalem is better than a thou- 
sand years in any other soil. Our brethren find good rest 
there. No ghost was ever known to steal out of this blessed 
cemetery.” 

“That is well,” responded Miriam; “may he whom you 
now lay to sleep prove no exception to the rule !” 

As they left the cemetery she put money into the sacris- 
tan’s hand to an amount that made his eyes open wide and 
glisten, and requested that it might be expended in masses 
for the repose of Father Antonio’s soul. 


197 


CHAPTER XXII 
The Medici Gardens 

“Donatello/’ said Miriam^ anxiously, as they came 
through the Piazza Barberini, “what can I do for you, my 
beloved friend? You are shaking as with the cold fit of the 
Roman fever.” 

“Yes,” said Donatello; “my heart shivers.” 

As soon as she could collect her thoughts, Miriam led the 
young man to the gardens of the Villa Medici, hoping that 
the quiet shade and sunshine of that delightful retreat would 
a little revive his spirits. The grounds are there laid out in 
the old fashion of straight paths, with borders of box, which 
form hedges of great height and density, and are shorn and 
trimmed to the evenness of a wall of stone, at the top and 
sides. There are green alleys, with long vistas overshad- 
owed by ilex-trees ; and at each intersection of the paths, the 
visitor finds seats of liehen-covered stone to repose upon, 
and marble statues that look forlornly at him, regretful of 
their lost noses. In the more open portions of the garden, 
before the seulptured front of the villa, you see fountains 
and flower-beds, and, in their season, a profusion of roses> 
from which the genial sun of Italy distils a fragrance, to be 
scattered abroad by the no less genial breeze. 

But Donatello drew no delight from these things. He 
walked onward in silent apathy, and looked at Miriam with 
strangely half-awakened and bewildered eyes, when she 
sought to bring his mind into sj^^mpathy with hers, and so 
relieve his heart of the burden that lay lumpishly upon it. 

198 


THE MEDICI GARDENS 


She made him sit down on a stone bench^ where two em- 
bowered alleys crossed each other ; so that they could discern 
the approach of any casual intruder a long way down the 
path. 

“My sweet friend,” she said, taking one of his passive 
hands in both of hers, “what can I say to comfort you?” 

“Nothing!” replied Donatello, with sombre reserve. 
“Nothing will ever comfort me.” 

“I accept my own misery,” continued Miriam, “my own 
guilt, if guilt it be; and, whether guilt or misery, I shall 
know how to deal with it. But you, dearest friend, that were 
the rarest creature in all this world, and seemed a being to 
whom sorrow could not cling, — you, whom I half fancied to 
belong to a race that had vanished forever, you only sur- 
viving, to show mankind how genial and how joyous life 
used to be, in some long-gone age, — what had you to do with 
grief or crime?” 

“They came to me as to other men,” said Donatello, 
broodingly. “Doubtless I was born to them.” 

“No, no; they came with me,” replied Miriam. “Mine is 
the responsibility ! Alas ! wherefore was I born ? Why did we 
ever meet? Why did I not drive you from me, knowing — 
for my heart foreboded it — ^that the cloud in which I walked 
would likewise envelop you!” 

Donatello stirred uneasily, with the irritable impatience 
that is often combined with a mood of leaden despondency. 
A brown lizard with two tails — a monster often engendered 
by the Roman sunshine — ran across his foot, and made him 
start. Then he sat silent awhile, and so did Miriam, trying 
to dissolve her whole heart into sympathy, and lavish it all 
upon him, were it only for a moment’s cordial. 

The young man lifted his hand to his breast, and, unin- 
tentionally, as Miriam’s hand was within his, he lifted that 
along with it. 


199 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


“I have a great weight here I’* said he. 

The fancy struck Miriam (but she drove it resolutely 
down) that Donatello almost imperceptibly shuddered^ while, 
in pressing his own hand against his heart, he pressed hers 
there too. 

“Rest your heart on me, dearest one I” she resumed. “Let 
me bear all its weight; I am well able to bear it; for I am a 
woman, and I love you! I love you, Donatello! Is there no 
comfort for you in this avowal? Look at me! Heretofore, 
you have found me pleasant to your sight. Gaze into my 
eyes ! Gaze into my soul ! Search as deeply as you may, you 
can never see half the tenderness and devotion that I hence- 
forth cherish for you. All that I ask is your acceptance of 
the utter self-sacrifice (but it shall be no sacrifice, to my 
great love) with which I seek to remedy the evil you have 
incurred for my sake!” 

All this fervor on Miriam’s part; on Donatello’s, a heavy 
silence. 

“Oh, speak to me !” she exclaimed. “Only promise me to 
be, by and by, a little happy !” 

“Happy?” murmured Donatello. “Ah, never again! 
never again!” 

“Never? Ah, that is a terrible word to say to me!” an- 
swered Miriam. “A terrible word to let fall upon a woman’s 
heart, when she loves you, and is conscious of having caused 
jmur misery! If you love me, Donatello, speak it not again. 
And surely you did love me?” 

“I did,” replied Donatello, gloomily and absently. 

Miriam released the young man’s hand, but suffered one 
of her own to lie close to his, and waited a moment to see 
whether he would make any effort to retain it. There was 
much depending upon that simple experiment. 

With a deep sigh — as when, sometimes, a slumberer turns 
over in a troubled dream — Donatello changed his position, 

200 


THE MEDICI GARDENS 


and clasped both his hands over his forehead. The genial 
warmth of a Roman April kindling into May was in the at- 
mosphere around them ; but when Miriam saw that involun- 
tary movement and heard that sigh of relief (for so she in- 
terpreted it), a shiver ran through her frame, as if the iciest 
wind of the Apennines were blowing over her. 

“He has done himself a greater wrong than I dreamed 
of,” thought she, with unutterable compassion. “Alas ! it 
was a sad mistake ! He might have had a kind of bliss in 
the consequences of this deed, had he been impelled to it by 
a love vital enough to survive the frenzy of that terrible 
moment, — mighty enough to make its own law, and justify 
itself against the natural remorse. But to have perpetrated 
a dreadful murder (and such was his crime, unless love, an- 
nihilating moral distinctions, made it otherwise) on no bet- 
ter warrant than a boy’s idle fantasy! I pity him from the 
very depths of my soul! As for myself, I am past my own 
or other’s pity.” 

She arose from the young man’s side, and stood before 
him with a sad, commiserating aspect; it was the look of a 
ruined soul, bewailing, in him, a grief less than what her 
profounder sympathies imposed upon herself. 

“Donatello, we must part,” she said, with melancholy 
firmness. “Yes; leave me! Go back to your old tower, 
which overlooks the green valley you have told me of among 
the Apennines. Then, all that has passed will be recognized 
as but an ugly dream. For, in dreams, the conscience sleeps, 
and we often stain ourselves with guilt of which we should 
be incapable in our waking moments. The deed you seemed 
to do, last night, was no more than such a dream ; there was 
as little substance in what you fancied yourself doing. Go; 
and forget it all!” 

“Ah, that terrible face!” said Donatello, pressing his 
hands over his eyes. “Dp you call that unreal?” 

201 




ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


“Yes; for you beheld it with dreaming eyes/’ replied 
Miriam. “It was unreal; and^ that you may feel it so^ it is 
requisite that you see this face of mine no more. Once, you 
may have thought it beautiful; now, it has lost its charm. 
Yet it would still retain a miserable potency to bring back 
the past illusion, and, in its train, the remorse and anguish 
that would darken all your life. Leave me, therefore, and 
forget me.” 

“Forget you, Miriam!” said Donatello, roused somewhat 
from his apathy of despair. “If I could remember you, and 
behold you, apart from that frightful visage which stares at 
me over your shoulder, that were a consolation, at least, if 
not a joy.” 

“But since that visage haunts you along with mine,” re- 
joined Miriam, glancing behind her, “we needs must part. 
Farewell, then! But if ever — in distress, peril, shame, 
poverty, or whatever anguish is most poignant, whatever 
burden heaviest — you should require a life to be given whol- 
ly, only to make your own a little easier, then summon me ! 
As the case now stands between us, you have bought me 
dear, and find me of little worth. Fling me away, therefore ! 
May you never need me more ! But, if otherwise, a wish — 
almost an unuttered wish — will bring me to you !” 

She stood a moment, expecting a reply. But Donatello’s 
eyes had again fallen on the ground, and he had not, in his 
bewildered mind and overburdened heart, a word to respond. 

“That hour I sjDcak of may never come,” said Miriam. 
“So farewell, — farewell forever.” 

“Farewell,” said Donatello. 

His voice hardly made its way through the environment of 
unaccustomed thoughts and emotions which had settled over 
him like a dense and dark cloud. Not improbably, he beheld 
Miriam through so dim a medium that she looked visionary; 
heard her speak only in a thin, faint echo. 

202 


THE MEDICI GARDENS 


She turned from the young man^ and, much as her heart 
yearned towards him, she would not profane that heavy part- 
ing by an embrace, or even a pressure of the hand. So soon 
after the semblance of such mighty love, and after it had 
been the impulse to so terrible a deed, they parted, in all out- 
ward show, as coldly as people part whose whole mutual in- 
tercourse has been encircled within a single hour. 

And Donatello, when Miriam had departed, stretched him- 
self at full length on the stone bench, and drew his hat over 
his eyes, as the idle and light-hearted youths of dreamy Italy 
are accustomed to do, when they lie down in the first con- 
venient shade, and snatch a noonday slumber. A stupor was 
upon him, which he mistook for such drowsiness as he had 
known in his innocent past life. But, by and by, he raised 
himself slowly and left the garden. Sometimes poor Do- 
natello started, as if he heard a shriek ; sometimes he shrank 
back, as if a face, fearful to behold, were thrust close to his 
own. In this dismal mood, bewildered with the novelty of 
sin and grief, he had little left of that singular resemblance, 
on account of which, and for their sport, his three friends 
had fantastically recognized him as the veritable Faun of 
Praxiteles. 


203 


CHAPTER XXIII 
Miriam and Hilda 

On leaving the Medici Gardens Miriam felt herself astray 
in the world ; and having no special reason to seek one place 
more than another, she suffered chance to direct her steps as 
it would. Thus it happened, that, involving herself in the 
crookedness of Rome, she saw Hilda’s tower rising before 
her, and was put in mind to climb to the young girl’s eyry, 
and ask why she had broken her engagement at the church 
of the Capuchins. People often do the idlest acts of their 
lifetime in their heaviest and most anxious moments; so that 
it would have been no wonder had Miriam been impelled 
only by so slight a motive of curiosity as we have indicated. 
But she remembered, too, and with a quaking heart, what 
the sculptor had mentioned of Hilda’s retracing her steps to- 
wards the court-yard of the Palazzo Caffarelli in quest of 
Miriam herself. Had she been compelled to choose between 
infamy in the eyes of the whole world, or in Hilda’s eyes 
alone, she would unhesitatingly have accepted the former, on 
condition of remaining spotless in the estimation of her 
white-souled friend. This possibility, therefore, that Hilda 
had witnessed the scene of the past night, was unquestion- 
ably the cause that drew Miriam to the tower, and made her 
linger and falter as she approached it. 

As she drew near, there were tokens to which her dis- 
turbed mind gave a sinister interpretation. Some of her 
friend’s airy family, the doves, with their heads imbedded 
disconsolately in their bosoms, were huddled in a corner of 

204 


MIRIAM AND HILDA 


the piazza; others had alighted on the heads, wings, shoul- 
ders, and trumpets of the marble angels which adorned the 
facade of the neighboring church; two or three had betaken 
themselves to the Virgin’s shrine ; and as many as could find 
room were sitting on Hilda’s window-sill. But all of them, 
so Miriam fancied, had a look of Aveary expectation and dis- 
appointment, — no flights, no flutterings, no cooing murmur; 
something that ought to have made their day glad and bright 
was evidently left out of this day’s history. And, further- 
more, Hilda’s white window-curtain was closely drawn, with 
only that one little aperture at the side, which Miriam re- 
membered noticing the night before. 

“Be quiet,” said Miriam to her own heart, pressing her 
hand hard upon it. “Why shouldst thou throb now? Hast 
thou not endured more terrible things than this ?” 

Whatever were her apprehensions, she would not turn 
back. It might be — and the solace would be worth a world 
— that Hilda, knowing nothing of the past night’s calamity, 
would greet her friend with a sunny smile, and so restore a 
portion of the vital warmth, for lack of which her soul was 
frozen. But could Miriam, guilty as slie was, permit Hilda 
to kiss her cheek, to clasp her hand, and thus be no longer so 
unspotted from the world as heretofore? 

“I will never permit her sweet touch again,” said Miriam, 
toiling up the staircase, “if I can find strength of heart to 
forbid it. But, oh! it would be so soothing in this wintry 
fever-fit of my heart. There can be no harm to my white 
Hilda in one parting kiss. That shall be all!” 

But, on reaching the upper landing-place, Miriam paused, 
and stirred not again till she had brought herself to an im- 
movable resolve. 

“My lips, my hands, shall never meet Hilda’s more,” said 
she. 

Meamvhile, Hilda sat listlessly in her painting-room. 

205 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


Had you looked into the little ad j oining chamber, you might 
have seen the slight imprint of her figure on -the bed, but 
would also have detected at once that the white counterpane 
had not been turned doAvn. The pillow was more disturbed; 
she had turned her face upon it, the poor child, and bedewed 
it with some of those tears (among the most chill and for- 
lorn that gush from human sorrow) which the innocent heart 
pours forth at its first actual discovery that sin is in the 
world. The young and pure are not apt to find out that mis- 
erable truth until it is brought home to them by the guilti- 
ness of some trusted friend. They may have heard much of 
the evil of the world, and seem to know it, but only as an 
impalpable theory. In due time, some mortal, whom they 
reverence too highly, is commissioned by Providence to teach 
them this direful lesson; he perpetrates a sin; and Adam 
falls anew, and Paradise, heretofore in unfaded bloom, is 
lost again, and closed forever, with the fiery swords gleam- 
ing at its gates. 

The chair in which Hilda sat was near the portrait of 
Beatrice Cenci, which had not yet been taken from the easel. 
It is a peculiarity of this picture, that its profoundest ex- 
pression eludes a straightforward glance, and can only be 
caught by side glimpses, or when the eye falls casually upon 
it; even as if the painted face had a life and consciousness 
of its own, and, resolving not to betray its secret of grief or 
guilt, permitted the true tokens to come forth only when it 
imagined itself unseen. No other such magical effect has 
ever been wrought by pencil. 

Now, opposite the easel hung a looking-glass, in which 
Beatrice’s face and Hilda’s were both reflected. In one of 
her weary, nerveless changes of position, Hilda happened to 
throw her eyes on the glass, and took in both these images at 
one unpremeditated glance. She fancied — nor was it with- 
out horror — that Beatrice’s expression, seen aside and van- 

206 


MIRIAM AND HILDA 


isliing in a moment, had been depicted in her own face like- 
wise, and flitted from it as timorously. 

“Am I, too, stained with guilt.^” thought the poor girl, 
hiding her face in her hands. 

Not so, thank Heaven! But, as regards Beatrice’s pic- 
ture, the incident suggests a theory which may account for 
its unutterable grief and mysterious shadow of guilt, without 
detracting from the purity which we love to attribute to that 
ill-fated girl. Who, indeed, can look at that mouth, — ^with 
its lips half apart, as innocent as a baby’s that has been cry- 
ing, — and not pronounce Beatrice sinless? It was the in- 
timate consciousness of her father’s sin that threw its shadow 
over her, and frightened her into a remote and inaccessible 
region, where no sympathy could come. It was the knowl- 
edge of Miriam’s guilt that lent the same expression to 
Hilda’s face. 

But Hilda nervously moved her chair, so that the images 
in the glass should be no longer visible. She now watched 
a speck of sunshine that came through a shuttered window, 
and crept from object to object, indicating each with a touch 
of its bright finger, and then letting them all vanish succes- 
sively. In like manner, her mind, so like sunlight in its 
natural cheerfulness, went from thought to thought, but 
found nothing that it could dwell upon for comfort. Never 
before had this young, energetic, active spirit known what 
it is to be despondent. It was the unreality of the world 
that made her so. Her dearest friend, whose heart seemed 
the most solid and richest of Hilda’s possessions, had no ex- 
istence for her any more; and in that dreary void, out of 
which Miriam had disappeared, the substance, the truth, the 
i integrity of life, the motives of effort, the joy of success, 
had departed along with her. 

It was long past noon, when a step came up the staircase. 
It had passed beyond the limits where there was communica- 

207 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


tion with the lower regions of the palace, and was mounting 
the successive flights which led only to Hilda’s precincts. 
Faint as the tread was, she heard and recognized it. It 
startled her into sudden life. Her first impulse was to 
spring to the door of the studio, and fasten it with lock and 
bolt. But a second thought made her feel that this would 
be an unworthy cowardice, on her own part, and also that 
Miriam — only yesterday her closest friend — had a right to 
be told, face to face, that thenceforth they must be forever 
strangers. 

She heard Miriam pause, outside of the door. We have 
already seen what was the latter’s resolve with respect to 
any kiss or pressure of the hand between Hilda and herself. 
AVe know not what became of the resolution. As Miriam 
was of a highly impulsive character, it may have vanished at 
the first sight of Hilda; but, at all events, she appeared to 
have dressed herself up in a garb of sunshine, and was dis- 
closed, as the door swung open, in all the glow of her re- 
markable beauty. The truth was, her heart leaped conclu- 
sively towards the only refuge that it had, or hoped. She 
forgot, just one instant, all cause for holding herself aloof. 
Ordinarily there was a certain reserve in Miriam’s demon- 
strations of affection, in consonance with the delicacy of her 
friend. To-day, she opened her arms to take Flilda in. 

^‘Dearest, darling Hilda!’ she exclaimed. “It gives me 
new life to see you !” 

Hilda was standing in the middle of the room. When her 
friend made a step or two from the door, she put forth her 
hands with an involuntary repellent gesture, so expressive, 
that Miriam at once felt a great chasm opening itself be- 
tween them two. They might gaze at one another from the 
opposite side, but without the possibility of ever meeting 
more: or, at least, since the chasm could never be bridged 
over, they must tread the whole round of Eternity to meet 

208 


MIRIAM AND HILDA 


on the other side. There was even a terror in the thought 
of their meeting again. It was as if Hilda or Miriam were 
dead, and could no longer hold intercourse without violating 
a spiritual law. 

Yet, in the wantonness of her despair, Miriam made one 
more step towards the friend whom she had lost. 

“Do not come nearer, Miriam!” said Hilda. 

Her look and tone were those of sorrowful entreaty, and 
yet they expressed a kind of confidence, as if the girl were 
conscious of a safeguard that could not be violated. 

“What has happened between us, Hilda asked Miriam. 
“Are we not friends?” 

“No, no !” said Hilda, shuddering. 

“At least we have been friends,” continued Miriam. “I 
loved you dearly! I love you still! You were to me as a 
younger sister; yes, dearer than sisters of the same blood; 
for you and I were so lonely, Hilda, that the whole world 
pressed us together by its solitude and strangeness. Then, 
will you not touch my hand ? Am I not the same as yester- 
day?” 

“Alas ! no, Miriam !” said Hilda. 

“Yes, the same, — the same for you, Hilda,” rejoined her 
lost friend. “Were you to touch my hand, you would find 
it as warm to your grasp as ever. If you were sick or suffer- 
ing, I would watch night and day for you. It is in such 
simple offices that true affection shows itself ; and so I speak 
of them. Yet now, Hilda, your very look seems to put me 
beyond the limits of human kind !” 

“It is not I, Miriam,” said Hilda; “not I that have done 
this.” 

“You, and you only, Hilda,” replied Miriam, stirred up to 
make her own cause good by the repellent force which her 
friend opposed to her. “I am a woman, as I was yesterday; 
endowed with the same truth of nature, the same warmth 

209 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


of heart, the same genuine -and earnest love, which you have 
always known in me. In any regard that concerns yourself, 
I am not changed. And believe me, Hilda, when a human 
being has chosen a friend out of all the world, it is only 
some faithlessness between themselves rendering true inter- 
course impossible, that can justify either friend in severing 
the bond. Have I deceived jmu ? Then cast me off ! Have 
I wronged you personally.^ Then forgive me, if you can. 
But, have I sinned against God and man, and deeply 
sinned.^ Then be more my friend than ever, for I need you 
more.” 

“Do not bewilder me thus, Miriam!” exclainjed Hilda, 
who had not forborne to express, by look and gesture, the 
anguish which this interview inflicted on her. “If I were 
one of God’s angels, with a nature incapable of stain, and 
garments that never could be spotted, I would keep ever at 
your side, and try to lead you upward. But I am a poor, 
lonely girl, whom God has set here in an evil world, and 
given her only a white robe, and bid her wear it back to Him, 
as white as when she put it on. Your powerful magnetism 
would be too much for me. The pure, white atmosphere, in 
which I try to discern what things are good and true, would 
be discolored. And, therefore, Miriam, before it is too late, 
I mean to put faith in this awful heart-quake, which warns 
me henceforth to avoid you.” 

“Ah, this is hard ! Ah^ this is terrible !” murmured Mir- 
iam, dropping her forehead in her hands. In a moment or 
two she looked up again, as pale as death, but with a com- 
posed countenance: “I alwaj^s said, Hilda, that you were 
merciless ; for I had a perception of it, even while you loved 
me best. You have no sin, nor any conception of what it is; 
and therefore you are so terribly severe! As an angel, you 
are not amiss ; but, as a human creature, and a woman among 
earthly men and women, you need a sin to soften you.” 

210 


MIRIAM AND HILDA 


*‘God forgive me,” said Hilda, “if I have said a needless- 
ly cruel word ! ’ 

“Let it pass,” answered Miriam; “I, whose heart it has 
smitten upon, forgive you. And tell me, before we part for- 
ever, what have you seen or known of me, since we last 
met.^” 

“A terrible thing, Miriam,” said Hilda, growing paler 
than before. 

“Do you see it written in my face, or painted in my eyes?” 
inquired Miriam, her trouble seeking relief in a half- 
frenzied raillery. “I would fain know how it is that Provi- 
dence, or fate, brings eye-witnesses to watch us, when we 
fancy ourselves acting in the remotest privacy. Did all 
Rome see it, then? Or, at least, our merry company of art- 
ists? Or is it some blood-stain on me, or death-scent in my 
garments? They say that monstrous deformities sprout out 
of fiends, who once were lovely angels. Do you perceive 
such in me already? Tell me, by our past friendship, Hilda, 
all you know.” 

Thus adjured, and frightened by the wild emotion which 
Miriam could not suppress, Hilda strove to tell what she had 
witnessed. 

“After the rest of the party had passed on, I went back 
to speak to you,” she said; “for there seemed to be a trouble 
on your mind, and I wished to share it with you, if you 
could permit me. The door of the little court-yard was 
partly shut; but I pushed it open, and saw you within, and 
Donatello, and a third person, whom I had before noticed in 
the shadow of a niche. He approached you, Miriam. You 
knelt to him ! — I saw Donatello spring upon him ! I would 
have shrieked, but my throat was dry. I would have rushed 
forward, but my limbs seemed rooted to the earth. It was 
like a flash of lightning. A look passed from your eyes to 
Donatello’s — a look — ” 


211 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


“Yes, Hilda, yes!” exclaimed Miriam, witli intense eager- 
ness. “Do not pause now! That lookr” 

“It revealed all your heart, Miriam,” continued Hilda, 
covering her eyes as if to shut out the recollection; “a look 
of hatred, triumph, vengeance, and, as it were, joy at some 
unhoped-for relief.” 

“Ah ! Donatello was right, then,” murmured Miriam, who 
shook throughout all her frame. “My eyes bade him do it! 
Go on, Hilda.” 

“It all passed so quickly, — all like a glare of lightning,” 
said Hilda, “and yet it seemed to me that Donatello had 
paused, while one might draw a breath. But that look! — 
Ah, Miriam, spare me. Need I tell more.i^” 

“No more; there needs no more, Hilda,” replied Miriam, 
bowing her head, as if listening to a sentence of condemna- 
tion from a supreme tribunal. “It is enough! You have 
satisfied my mind on a point where it was greatly disturbed. 
Henceforward, I shall be quiet. Thank you, Hilda.” 

She was on the point of departing, but turned back again 
from the threshold. 

“This is a terrible secret to be kept in a young girl’s 
bosom,” she observed; “what will you do with it, my poor 
child 

“Heaven help and guide me,” answered Hilda, bursting 
into tears; “for the burden of it crushes me to the earth! 
It seems a crime to know of such a thing, and to keep it to 
myself. It knocks within my heart continually, threatening, 
imploring, insisting to be let out ! Oh, my mother ! — my 
mother ! Were she yet living, I would travel over land and 
sea to tell her this dark secret, as I told all the little troubles 
of my infancy. But I am alone — alone ! Miriam, you were 
my dearest, only friend. Advise me what to do.” 

This was a singular appeal, no doubt, from the stainless 
maiden to the guilty woman, whom she had just banished 

212 


MIRIAM AND HILDA 


from her heart forever. But it bore striking testimony to 
the impression which Miriam’s natural uprightness and im- 
pulsive generosity had made on the friend who knew her 
best; and it deeply comforted the poor criminal, by proving 
to her that the bond between Hilda and herself was vital yet. 

As far as she was able, Miriam at once responded to the 
girl’s cry for help. 

“If I deemed it good for your peace of mind,” she said, 
“to bear testimony against me for this deed, in the face of 
all the world, no consideration of myself should weigh with 
me an instant. But I believe that you would find no relief 
in such a course. What men call justice lies chiefly in out- 
ward formalities, and has never the close application and 
fitness that would be satisfactory to a soul like yours. I can- 
not be fairly tried and judged before an earthly tribunal; 
and of this, Hilda, you would perhaps become fatally con- 
scious when it was too late. Roman justice, above all things, 
is a byword. What have you to do with it ? Leave all such 
thoughts aside! Yet, Hilda, I would not have you keep my 
secret imprisoned in your heart if it tries to leap out, and 
stings you, like a wild, venomous thing, when you thrust it 
back again. Have you no other friend, now that you have 
been forced to give me up?” 

“No other,” answered Hilda, sadly. 

“Yes; Kenyon!” rejoined Miriam. 

“He cannot be my friend,” said Hilda, “because — ^because 
— I have fancied that he sought to be something more.” 

“Fear nothing !” replied Miriam, shaking her head, with a 
strange smile. “This story will frighten his new-born love 
out of its little life, if that be what you wish. Tell him the 
secret, then, and take his wise and honorable counsel as to 
what should next be done. I know not what else to say.” 

“I never dreamed,” said Hilda, — “how could you think it? 
— of betraying you to justice. But I see how it is, Miriam. 

213 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


I must keep your secret^ and die of it, unless God sends me 
some relief by methods wliich are now beyond my power to 
imagine. It is very dreadful. Ah! now I understand how 
the sins of generations past have created an atmosphere of 
sin for those that follow. While there is a single guilty per- 
son in the universe, each innocent one must feel his in- 
nocence tortured by that guilt. Your deed, Miriam, has 
darkened the whole sky V* 

Poor Hilda turned from her unhappy friend, and, sinking 
on her knees in a corner of the chamber, could not be pre- 
vailed upon to utter another word. And Miriam, with a long 
regard from the threshold, bade farewell to this doves* nest, 
this one little nook of pure thoughts and innocent enthusi- 
asms, into which she had brought such trouble. Every crime 
destroys more Edens than our own I 


214 


CHAPTER XXIV 


The Tower Among the Apennines 

It was in June that the sculptor, Kenyon, arrived on horse- 
back at the gate of an ancient country-house (which, from 
some of its features, might almost be called a castle) situated 
in a part of Tuscany somewhat remote from the ordinary 
track of tourists. Thither we must now accompany him, and 
endeavor to make our story flow onward, like a streamlet, 
past a gray tower that rises on the hill-side, overlooking a 
spacious valley, which is set in the grand framework of the 
Apennines. 

The sculptor had left Rome with the retreating tide of 
foreign residents. For, as summer approaches, the Niobe of 
Nations is made to bewail anew, and doubtless with sincerity, 
the loss of that large part of her population, which she de- 
rives from other lands, and on whom depends much of what- 
ever remnant of prosperity she still enjoys. Rome, at this 
season, is pervaded and overhung with atmospheric terrors, 
and insulated within a charmed and deadly circle. The 
crowd of wandering tourists betake themselves to Switzer- 
land, to the Rhine, or, from this central home of the world, 
to their native homes in England or America, which they are 
apt thenceforward to look upon as provincial, after once hav- 
ing yielded to the spell of the Eternal City. The artist, who 
contemplates an indefinite succession of winters in this home 
of art (though his first thought was merely to improve him- 
self by a brief visit), goes forth, in the summer time, to 
sketch scenery and costume among the Tuscan hills, and 

215 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


pour, if he can, the purple air of Italy over his canvas. He 
studies the old schools of art in the mountain- towns where 
they were born, and where they are still to be seen in the 
faded frescos of Giotto and Cimabue, on the walls of many 
a church, or in the dark chapels, in which the sacristan draws 
aside the veil from a treasured picture of Perugino. Thence, 
the happy painter goes to walk the long, bright galleries of 
Florence, or to steal glowing colors from the miraculous 
works which he finds in a score of Venetian palaces. Such 
summers as these, spent amid whatever is exquisite in art, or 
wild and picturesque in nature, may not inadequately repay 
him for the chill neglect and disappointment through which 
he has probably languished, in his Roman winter. This 
sunny, shadowy, breezy, wandering life, in which he seeks 
for beauty as his treasure, and gathers for his winter’s 
honey what is but a passing fragrance to all other men, is 
worth living for, come afterwards what may. Even if he die 
unrecognized, the artist has had his share of enj oyment and 
success. 

Kenyon had seen, at a distance of many miles, the old 
villa or castle, towards which his journey lay, looking from 
its height over a broad expanse of valley. As he drew near- 
er, however, it had been hidden among the inequalities of 
the hill-side, until the winding road brought him almost to 
the iron gateway. The sculptor found this substantial bar- 
rier fastened with lock and bolt. There was no bell, nor 
other instrument of sound; and, after summoning the in- 
visible garrison with his voice, instead of a trumpet, he had 
leisure to take a glance at the exterior of the fortress. 

About thirty j^ards within the gateway rose a square tower, 
lofty enough to be a very prominent obj ect in the landscape, 
and more than sufficiently massive in proportion to its 
height. Its antiquity was evidently such, that, in a climate 
of more abmidant moisture, the ivy would have mantled it 

216 


THE TOWER AMONG THE APENNINES 


from head to foot in a garment that might, by this time, 
have been centuries old, though ever new. In the dry Italian 
air, however. Nature had only so far adopted this old pile 
of stone-work as to cover almost every hand’s-breadth of it 
with close-clinging lichens and yellow moss; and the im- 
memorial growth of these kindly productions rendered the 
general hue of the tower soft and venerable, and took away 
the aspect of nakedness which would have made its age 
drearier than now. 

Up and down the height of the tower were scattered three 
or four windows, the lower ones grated with iron bars, the 
upper ones vacant both of window-frames and glass. Be- 
sides these larger openings, there were several loopholes and 
little square apertures, which might be supposed to light the 
staircase, that doubtless climbed the interior towards the 
battlemented and machicolated summit. With this last-men- 
tioned warlike garniture upon its stern old head and brow, 
the tower seemed evidently a stronghold of times long past. 
Many a cross-bovmian had shot his shafts from those win- 
dows and loopholes, and from the vantage-height of those 
gray battlements; many a flight of arrows, too, had hit all 
round about the embrasures above, or the apertures below, 
where the helmet of a defender had momentarily glimmered. 
On festal nights, moreover, a hundred lamps had often 
gleamed afar over the valley, suspended from the iron hooks 
that were ranged for the purpose beneath the battlements 
and every window. 

Connected with the tower, and extending behind it, there 
seemed to be a very spacious residence, chiefly of more 
modern date. It perhaps owed much of its fresher appear- 
ance, however, to a coat of stucco and yellow wash, which is 
a sort of renovation very much in vogue with the Italians. 
Kenyon noticed over a doorway, in the portion of the edifice 
immediately adjacent to the tower, a cross, which, with a bell 

217 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


suspended above the roof^ indicated that this was a con- 
secrated precinct^ and the chapel of the mansion. 

Meanwhile, the hot sun so incommoded the unsheltered 
traveller, that he shouted forth another impatient summons. 
Happening, at the same moment, to look upward, he saw a 
figure leaning from an embrasure of the battlements, and 
gazing down at him. , 

“Ho, Signore Count!” cried the sculptor, waving his straw 
hat, for he recognized the face, after a moment’s doubt. 
“This is a warm reception, truly ! Pray bid your porter let 
me in, before the sun shrivels me quite into a cinder.” 

“I will come myself,” responded Donatello, flinging down 
his voice out of the clouds, as it were; “old Tomaso and old 
Stella are both asleep, no doubt, and the rest of the people 
are in the vineyard. But I have expected you, and you are 
welcome 1” 

The young Count — as perhaps we had better designate 
him in his ancestral tower — vanished from the battlements; 
and Kenyon saw his figure appear successively at each of the 
windows, as he descended. On every reappearance, he turned 
his face towards the sculptor and gave a nod and smile; for 
a kindly impulse prompted him thus to assure his visitor of 
a welcome, after keeping him so long at an inhospitable 
threshold. 

Kenyon, however (naturally and professionally expert at 
reading the expression of the human countenance), had a 
vague sense that this was not the young friend whom he had 
known so familiarly in Rome; not the sylvan and untutored 
youth, whom Miriam, Hilda, and himself had liked, laughed 
at, and sported with ; not the Donatello whose identity they 
had so playfully mixed up with that of the Farm of Prax- 
iteles. 

Finally, when his host had emerged from a side portal of 
the mansion, and approached the gateway, the traveller still 

218 


THE TOWER AMONG THE APENNINES 


felt that there was something lost, or something gained (he 
hardly knew which), that set the Donatello of to-day ir- 
reconcilably at odds with him of yesterday. His very gait 
showed it, in a certain gravity, a weight and measure of step, 
that had nothing in common with the irregular buoyancy 
which used to distinguish him. His face was paler and thin- 
ner, and the lips less full and less apart. 

“I have looked for you a long while,” said Donatello; and, 
though his voice sounded differently, and cut out its words 
more sharply than had been its wont, still there was a smile 
shining on his face, that, for the moment, quite brought 
back the Faun. “I shall be more cheerful, perhaps, now that 
you have come. It is very solitary here.” 

“I have come slowly along, often lingering, often turning 
aside,” replied Kenyon; “for I found a great deal to inter- 
est me in the mediaeval sculpture hidden away in the church- 
es hereabouts. An artist, whether painter or sculptor, may 
be pardoned for loitering through such a region. But what 
a fine old tower ! Its tall front is like a page of black-letter, 
taken from the history of the Italian republics.” 

“I know little or nothing of its history,” said the Count, 
glancing upward at the battlements, where he had just been 
standing. “But I thank my forefathers for building it so 
high. I like the windy summit better than the world below, 
and spend much of my time there, nowadays.” 

“It is a pity you are not a star-gazer,” observed Kenyon, 
also looking up. “It is higher than Galileo’s tower, which 
I saw, a week or two ago, outside of the walls of Florence.” 

“A star-gazer? I am one,” replied Donatello. “I sleep 
in the tower, and often watch very late on the battlements. 
There is a dismal old staircase to climb, however, before 
reaching the top, and a succession of dismal chambers, from 
story to story. Some of them were prison chambers in times 
past, as old Tomaso will tell you.” 

219 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


The repugnance intimated in his tone at the idea of this 
gloomy staircase and these ghostly, dimly lighted rooms, re- 
minded Kenyon of the original Donatello, much more than 
his present custom of midnight vigils on the battlements. 

“I shall be glad to share your watch,” said the guest; 
‘ 'especially by moonlight. The prospect of this broad valley 
must be very fine. But I was not aware, my friend, that 
these were your country habits. I have fancied you in a sort 
of Arcadian life, tasting rich figs, and squeezing the juice 
out of the sunniest grapes, and sleeping soundly all night, 
after a day of simple pleasures.” 

“I may have known such a life, when I was younger,” an- 
swered the Count, gravely. “I am not a boy now. Time 
flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.” 

The sculptor could not but smile at the triteness of the 
remark, which, nevertheless, had a kind of originality as 
coming from Donatello. He had thought it out from his 
own experience, and perhaps considered himself as com- 
municating a new truth to mankind. 

They were now advancing up the court-yard; and the 
long extent of the villa, with its iron-barred lower windows 
and balconied upper ones, became visible, stretching back 
towards a grove of trees. 

"At some period of your family history,” observed Ken- 
yon, "the Counts of Monte Beni must have led a patriarchal 
life in this vast house. A great-grandsire and all his de- 
scendants might find ample verge here, and with space, too, 
for each separate brood of little ones to play within its own 
precincts. Is your present household a large one?” 

"Only m5^self,” answered Donatello, "and Tomaso, who 
has been butler since my grandfather’s time, and old Stella, 
who goes sweeping and dusting about the chambers, and 
Girolamo, the cook, who has but an idle life of it. He shall 
send you up a chicken forthwith. But, first of all, I must 

220 


THE TOWER AMONG THE APENNINES 


summon one of the contadini from the farm-house yonder, 
to take your horse to the stable.” 

Accordingly, the young Count shouted amain, and with 
such effect, that, after several repetitions of the outcry, an 
old gray woman protruded her head and a broom-handle 
from a chamber window; the venerable butler emerged from 
a recess in the side of the house, where was a well, or reser- 
voir, in which he had been cleansing a small wine-cask; and 
a sunburnt contadino, in his shirt-sleeves, showed himself on 
the outskirts of the vineyard, with some kind of a farming 
tool in his hand. Donatello found employment for all these 
retainers in providing accommodation for his guest and 
steed, and then ushered the sculptor into the vestibule of 
the house. 

It was a square and lofty entrance-room, which, by the 
solidity of its construction, might have been an Etruscan 
tomb, being paved and walled with heavy blocks of stone, 
and vaulted almost as massively overhead. On two sides, 
there were doors, opening into long suites of anterooms and 
saloons; on the third side, a stone staircase, of spacious 
breadth, ascending, by dignified degrees and with wide rest- 
ing-places, to another floor of similar extent. Through one 
of the doors, which was ajar, Kenyon beheld an almost inter- 
minable vista of apartments, opening one beyond the other, 
and reminding him of the hundred rooms in Blue Beard’s 
castle, or the countless halls in some palace of the Arabian 
Nights. 

It must have been a numerous family, indeed, that could 
ever have sufficed to people with human life so large an 
abode as this, and impart social warmth to such a wide world 
within doors. The sculptor confessed to himself, that Do- 
natello could allege reason enough for growing melancholy, 
having only his own personality to vivify it all. 

221 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


“How a woman’s face would brighten it up!” he ejacu- 
lated^ not intending to be overheard. 

But, glancing at Donatello, he saw a stern and sorrowful 
look in his eyes, which altered his youthful face as if it had 
seen thirty years of trouble; and, at the same moment, old 
Stella showed herself through one of the doorways, as the 
only representative of her sex at Monte Beni. 


222 


CHAPTER XXV 
Sunshine 

“Gome/" said the Count, “I see you already find the old 
house dismal. So do I, indeed ! And yet it was a cheerful 
place in my boyhood. But, you see, in my father’s days 
(and the same was true of all my endless line of grand- 
fathers, as I have heard), there used to be uncles, aunts, and 
ail manner of kindred, dwelling together as one family. 
They were a merry and kindly race of people, for the most 
part, and kept one another’s hearts warm.” 

“Two hearts might be enough for warmth,” observed the 
sculptor, “even in so large a house as this. One solitary 
heart, it is true, may be apt to shiver a little. But, I trust, 
my friend, that the genial blood of your race still flows in 
many veins besides your own?” 

“I am the last,” said Donatello, gloomily. “They have 
all vanished from me, since my childhood. Old Tomaso will 
tell you that the air of Monte Beni is not so favorable to 
length of days as it used to be. But that is not the secret of 
the quick extinction of my kindred.” 

“Then you are aware of a more satisfactory reason?” 
suggested Kenyon. 

“I thought of one, the other night, while I was gazing at 
the stars,” answered Donatello; “but, pardon me, I do not 
mean to tell it. One cause, however, of the longer and 
healthier life of my forefathers was, that they had many 
pleasant customs, and means of making themselves glad, and 

223 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


their guests and friends along with them. Nowadays we 
have but one !” 

“And what is that.^” asked the sculptor. 

“You shall see I” said his young host. 

By this time, he had ushered the sculptor into one of the 
numberless saloons; and, calling for refreshment, old Stella 
placed a cold fowl upon the table, and quickly followed it 
with a savory omelet, which Girolamo had lost no time in 
preparing. She also brought some cherries, plums, and 
apricots, and a plate full of particularly delicate figs, of last ^ 
year’s growth. The butler showing his white head at the i 
door, his master beckoned to him. j 

“Tomaso, bring some Sunshine !” said he. | 

The readiest method of obeying this order, one might sup- 
pose, would have been, to fling wide the green window- 
blinds, and let the glow of the summer noon into the care- 
fully shaded room. But, at Monte Beni, with provident 
caution against the wintry days, when there is little sunshine, i 
and the rainy ones, when there is none, it was the hereditary 
custom to keep their Sunshine stored away in the cellar. 
Old Tomaso quickly produced some of it in a small, straw- ' 
covered flask, out of which he extracted the cork, and in- , 
serted a little cotton wool, to absorb the olive-oil that kept I 
the precious liquid from the air. | 

“This is a wine,” observed the Count, “the secret of mak- 
ing which has been kept in our family for centuries upon j 
centuries ; nor would it avail any man to steal the secret, un- j 
less he could also steal the vineyard, in which alone the | 
Monte Beni grape can be produced. There is little else left 
me, save that patch of vines. Taste some of their juice, and , 
tell me whether it is worthy to be called Sunshine! for that ^ 
is its name.” ‘ 

“A glorious name, too !” cried the sculptor. 

“Taste it,” said Donatello, filling his friend’s glass, and ! 

224 


SUNSHINE 


pouring likewise a little into his own. “But first smell its 
fragrance; for the wine is very lavish of it^ and will scatter 
it all abroad.” 

“Ah, how exquisite!” said Kenyon. “No other wine has a 
bouquet like this. The flavor must be rare, indeed, if it ful- 
fil the promise of this fragrance, which is like the airy sweet- 
ness of youthful hopes, that no realities will ever satisfy!” 

This invaluable liquor was of a pale golden hue, like other 
of the rarest Italian wines, and, if carelessly and irreligious- 
ly quaffed, might have been mistaken for a very fine sort of 
champagne. It was not, however, an effervescing wine, al- 
though its delicate piquancy produced a somewhat similar 
eifect upon the palate. Sipping, the guest longed to sip 
again; but the wine demanded so deliberate a pause, in or- 
der to detect the hidden peculiarities and subtile exquisite- 
ness of its flavor, that to drink it was really more a moral 
than a physical enjoyment. There was a deliciousness in it 
that eluded analysis, and — ^like whatever else is superlatively 
good — was perhaps better appreciated in the memory than 
by present consciousness. 

One of its most ethereal charms lay in the transitory life 
of the wine’s richest qualities; for, while it required a cer- 
tain leisure and delay, yet, if you lingered too long upon the 
draught, it became disenchanted both of its fragrance and 
its flavor. 

The lustre should not be forgotten, among the other ad- 
mirable endowments of the Monte Beni wine; for, as it stood 
in Kenyon’s glass, a little circle of light glowed on the table 
round about it, as if it were really so much golden sunshine. 

“I feel myself a better man for that ethereal potation,” 
observed the sculptor. “The finest Orvieto, or that famous 
wine, the Est Est Est of Montefiascone, is vulgar in com- 
parison. This is surely the wine of the Golden Age, such as 
Bacchus himself first taught mankind to press from the 

225 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


choicest of his grapes. My dear County why is it not illus- 
trious.^ The pale, liquid gold, in every such flask as that, 
might be solidified into golden scudi, and would quickly make * 
you a millionnaire I” 

Tomaso, the old butler, who was standing by the table, 
and enjoying the praises of the wine quite as much as if be- 
stowed upon himself, made answer, — 

“We have a tradition, signore,” said he, “that this rare 
wine of our vineyard would lose all its wonderful qualities, 
if any of it were sent to market. The Counts of Monte Beni 
have never parted with a single flask of it for gold. At 
their banquets, in the olden time, they have entertained 
princes, cardinals, and once an emperor, and once a pope, 
with this delicious wine, and always, even to this day, it has 
been their custom to let it flow freely, when those whom they 
love and honor sit at the board. But the grand duke him- 
self could not drink that wine, except it were under this very 
roof!” 

“What you tell me, my good friend,” replied Kenyon, 
“makes me venerate the Sunshine of Monte Beni even more 
abundantly than before. As I understand you, it is a sort of 
consecrated juice, and symbolizes the holy virtues of hospi- 
tality and social kindness?” 

“Why, partly so. Signore,” said the old butler, with a 
shrewd twinkle in his eye; “but, to speak out all the truth, 
there is another excellent reason why neither a cask nor a 
flask of our precious vintage should ever be sent to market. 
The wine. Signore, is so fond of its native home, that a 
transportation of even a few miles turns it quite sour. And 
yet it is a wine that keeps well in the cellar, underneath this 
floor, and gathers fragrance, flavor, and brightness in its 
dark dungeon. That very flask of Sunshine, now, has kept 
itself for you, sir guest (as a maid reserves her sweetness 

226 


SUNSHINE 


till her lover comes for it), ever since a merry vintage-time, 
when the Signore Count here was a boy !” 

“You must not wait for Tomaso to end his discourse about 
the wine, before drinking off your glass,” observed Dona- 
tello. “When once the flask is uncorked, its finest qualities 
lose little time in making their escape. I doubt whether 
your last sip will be quite so delicious as you found the 
first.” 

And, in truth, the sculptor fancied that the Sunshine be- 
came almost imperceptibly clouded, as he approached the 
bottom of the flask. The effect of the wine, however, was 
a gentle exhilaration, which did not so speedily pass away. 

Being thus refreshed, Kenyon looked around him at the 
antique saloon in which they sat. It was constructed in a 
most ponderous style, with a stone floor, on which heavy 
pilasters were planted against the wall, supporting arches 
that crossed one another in the vaulted ceiling. The upright 
walls, as well as the compartments of the roof, were com- 
pletely covered with frescos, which doubtless had been 
brilliant when first executed, and perhaps for generations 
afterwards. The designs were of a festive and joyous 
character, representing Arcadian scenes, where nymphs, 
fauns, and satyrs disported themselves among mortal youths 
and maidens; and Pan, and the god of wine, and he of 
sunshine and music, disdained not to brighten some sylvan 
merry-making with the scarcely veiled glory of their pres- 
ence. A wreath of dancing figures, in admirable variety of 
shape and motion, was festooned quite round the cornice of 
the room. 

In its first splendor, the saloon must have presented an 
aspect both gorgeous and enlivening; for it invested some 
of the cheerfulest ideas and emotions of which the human 
mind is susceptible with the external reality of beautiful 
form, and, rich, harmonious glow and variety of color. But 

227 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


the frescos were now very ancient. They had been rubbed 
and scrubbed by old Stella and many a predecessor, and had 
been defaced in one spot, and retouched in another, and had 
peeled from the wall in patches, and had hidden some of 
their brightest portions under dreary dust, till the joyous- 
ness had quite vanished out of them all. It was often diffi- 
cult to puzzle out the design; and even where it was more 
readily intelligible, the figures showed like the ghosts of 
dead and buried joys, — the closer their resemblance to the 
happy past, the gloomier npw. For it is thus, that with only 
an inconsiderable change, the gladdest objects and exis- 
tences become the saddest; hope fading into disappointment; 
joy darkening into grief, and festal splendor into funereal 
duskiness; and all evolving, as their moral, a grim identity 
between gay things and sorrowful ones. Only give them a 
little time, and they turn out to be just alike! 

“There has been much festivity in this saloon, if I may 
judge by the character of its frescos,” remarked Kenyon, 
whose spirits were still upheld by the mild potency of the 
Monte Beni wine. “Your forefathers, my dear Count, must 
have been j oyous fellows, keeping up the vintage merriment 
throughout the year. It does me good to think of them glad- 
dening the hearts of men and women, with their wine of 
Sunshine, even in the Iron Age, as Pan and Bacchus, whom 
we see yonder, did in the Golden one I” 

“Yes; there have been merry times in the banquet-hall 
of Monte Beni, even within my own remembrance,” replied 
Donatello, looking gravely at the painted walls. “It was 
meant for mirth, as you see; and when I brought my own 
cheerfulness into the saloon, these frescos looked cheerful 
too. But, methinks, they have all faded since I saw them 
last.” 

“It would be a good idea,” said the sculptor, falling into 
his companion’s vein, and helping him out with an illustra- 

228 


SUNSHINE 


tion which Donatello himself could not have put into shape, 
“to convert this saloon into a chapel; and when the priest 
tells his hearers of the instability of earthly joys, and would 
show how drearily they vanish, he may point to these pic- 
tures, that were so joyous and are so dismal. He could not 
illustrate his theme so aptly in any other way.” 

“True, indeed,” answered the Count, his former simpli- 
city strangely mixing itself up with an experience that had 
changed him; “and yonder, where the minstrels used to 
stand, the altar shall be placed. A sinful man might do all 
the more' effective penance in this old banquet-hall.” 

“But I should regret to have suggested so ungenial a 
transformation in your hospitable saloon,” continued Ken- 
yon, duly noting the change in Donatello’s characteristics. 
“You startle me, my friend, by so ascetic a design! It 
would hardly have entered your head, when we first met. 
Pray do not, — if I may take the freedom of a somewhat 
elder man to advise you,” added he, smiling, — “pray do not, 
under a notion of improvement, take upon yourself to be 
sombre, thoughtful, and penitential, like all the rest of us.” 

Donatello made no answer, but sat awhile, appearing to 
follow with his eyes one of the figures, which was repeated 
many times over in the groups upon the walls and ceiling. 
It formed the principal link of an allegory, by which (as is 
often the case in such pictorial designs) the whole series 
of frescos were bound together, but which it would be im- 
possible, or, at least, very wearisome, to unravel. The 
sculptor’s eyes took a similar direction, and soon began to 
trace through the vicissitudes, — once gay, now sombre, — in 
which the old artist had involved it, the same individual fig- 
ure. He fancied a resemblance in it to Donatello himself; 
and it put him in mind of one of the purposes with which he 
had come to Monte Beni. 

“My dear Count,” said he, “I have a proposal to make. 

229 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


You must let me employ a little of my leisure in modelling 
your bust. You remember what a striking resemblance we 
aU of us — Hilda^ Miriam, and I — found between your fea- 
tures and those of the Faun of Praxiteles. Then, it seemed 
an identity; but now that I know your face better, the like- 
ness is far less apparent. Your head in marble would be a 
treasure to me. Shall I have it?’* 

*T have a weakness which I fear I cannot overcome,” re- 
plied the Count, turning away his face. “It troubles me to 
be looked at steadfastly.” 

“I have observed it since we have been sitting here, 
though never before,” rejoined the sculptor. “It is a kind 
of nervousness, I apprehend, which you caught in the Ro- 
man air, and which grows upon you, in your solitary life. 
It need be no hindrance to my taking your bust; for I will 
catch the likeness and expression by side glimpses, which 
(if portrait-painters and bust-makers did but know it) al- 
ways bring home richer results than a broad stare.” 

“You may take me if you have the power,” said Dona- 
tello; but, even as he spoke, he turned away his face; “and 
if you can see what makes me shrink from you, you are 
welcome to put it in the bust. It is not my will, but my ne- 
cessity, to avoid men’s eyes. Only,” he added, with a smile 
which made Kenyon doubt whether he might not as well 
copy the Faun as model a new bust, — “only, you know, you 
must not insist on my uncovering these ears of mine !” 

“Nay; I never should dream of such a thing,” answered 
the sculptor, laughing, as the young Count shook his cluster- 
ing curls. “I could not hope to persuade you, remembering 
how Miriam once failed!” 

Nothing is more unaccountable than the spell that often 
lurks in a spoken word. A thought may be present to the 
mind, so distinctly that no utterance could make it more so; 
and two minds may be conscious of the same thought, in 

2S0 


SUNSHINE 


which one or both take the profoundest interest; but as long 
as it remains unspoken, their familiar talk flows quietly over 
the hidden idea, as a rivulet may sparkle and dimple over 
something sunken in its bed. But, speak the word; and it is 
like bringing up a drowned body out of the deepest pool of 
the rivulet, which has been aware of the horrible secret all 
along, in spite of its smiling surface. 

And even so, when Kenyon chanced to make a distinct 
reference to Donatello’s relations with Miriam (though the 
subject was already in both their minds), a ghastly emotion 
rose up out of the depths of the young Count’s heart. He 
trembled either with anger or terror, and glared at the 
sculptor with wild eyes, like a wolf that meets you in the 
forest, and hesitates whether to flee or turn to bay. But, 
as Kenyon still looked calmly at him, his aspect gradually 
became less disturbed, though far from resuming its former 
quietude. 

“You have spoken her name,” said he, at last, in an 
altered and tremulous tone; “tell me, now, all that you know 
of her.” 

“I scarcely think that I have any later intelligence than 
yourself,” answered Kenyon; “Miriam left Rome at about 
the time of your own departure. Within a day or two after 
our last meeting at the Church of the Capuchins, I called 
at her studio and found it vacant. Whither she has gone, I 
cannot tell.” 

Donatello asked no further questions. 

They rose from table, and strolled together about the 
premises, whiling away the afternoon with brief intervals of 
unsatisfactory conversation, and many shadowy silences. 
The sculptor had a perception of change in his companion, 
— possibly of growth and development, but certainly of 
change, — ^which saddened him, because it took away much 

231 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


of the simple grace that was the best of Donatello’s pecu- 
liarities. 

Kenyon betook himself to repose that night in a grim, 
old, vaulted apartment, which, in the lapse of five or six 
centuries, had probably been the birth, bridal, and death 
chamber of a great many generations of the Monte Beni 
family. He was aroused, soon after daylight, by the clamor 
of a tribe of beggars who had taken their stand in a little 
rustic lane that crept beside that portion of the villa, and 
were addressing their petitions to the open windows. By 
and by, they appeared to have received alms, and took their 
departure. 

“Some charitable Christian has sent those vagabonds 
away,” thought the sculptor, as he resumed his interrupted 
nap ; “who could it be ? Donatello has his own rooms in the 
tower; Stella, Tomaso, and the cook are a world’s width off ; 
and I fancied myself the only inhabitant in this part of the 
house.” 

In the breadth and space which so delightfully character- 
ize an Italian villa, a dozen guests might have had each his 
suite of apartments without infringing upon one another’s 
ample precincts. But, so far as Kenyon knew, he was the 
only visitor beneath Donatello’s widely extended roof. 


2S2 


CHAPTER XXVI 


The Pedigree of Monte Beni 

From the old butler^ whom he found to be a very gracious 
and affable personage^, Kenyon soon learned many curious 
particulars about the family history and hereditary peculiar- 
ities of the Counts of Monte Beni. There was a pedigree, 
the later portion of which — that is to say, for ^ little more 
than a thousand years — a genealogist would have found de- 
light in tracing out, link by link, and authenticating by 
records and documentary evidences. It would have been 
as difficult, however, to follow up the stream of Donatello’s 
ancestry to its dim source, as travellers have found it to 
reach the mysterious fountains of the Nile. And, far be- 
yond the region of definite and demonstrable fact, a ro- 
mancer might have strayed into a region of old poetry, where 
the rich soil, so long uncultivated and untrodden, had lapsed 
into nearly its primeval state of wilderness. Among those 
antique paths, now overgrown with tangled and riotous vege- 
tation, the wanderer must needs follow his own guidance, 
and arrive nowhither at last. 

The race of Monte Beni, beyond a doubt, was one of the 
oldest in Italy, where families appear to survive at least, if 
not to flourish, on their half-decayed roots, oftener than in 
England or France. It came down in a broad track from 
the Middle Ages; but, at epochs anterior to those, it was dis- 
tinctly visible in the gloom of the period before chivalry put 
forth its flower; and further still, we are almost afraid to 
say, it was seen, though with a fainter and wavering course, 

233 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


in the early morn of Christendom, when the Roman Empire 
had hardly begun to show symptoms of decline. At that 
venerable distance, the heralds gave up the lineage in de- 
spair. 

But where written record left the genealogy of Monte 
Beni, tradition took it up, and carried it without dread or 
shame beyond the Imperial ages into the times of the Roman 
republic; beyond those, again, into the epoch of kingly rule. 
Nor even so remotely among the mossy centuries did it 
pause, but strayed onward into that gray antiquity of which 
there is no token left, save its cavernous tombs, and a few 
bronzes, and some quaintly wrought ornaments of gold, and 
gems with mystic figures and inscriptions. There, or there- 
abouts, the line was supposed to have had its origin in the 
sylvan life of Etruria, while Italy was yet guiltless of Rome. 

Of course, as we regret to say, the earlier and very much 
the larger portion of this respectable descent — and the same 
is true of many briefer pedigrees — must be looked upon as 
altogether mythical. Still, it threw a romantic interest 
around the unquestionable antiquity of the Monte Beni 
family, and over that tract of their own vines and fig-trees, 
beneath the shade of which they had unquestionably dwelt 
for immemorial ages. And there they had laid the founda- 
tions of their tower, so long ago that one half of its height 
was said to be sunken under the surface and to hide subter- 
ranean chambers which once were cheerful with the olden 
sunshine. 

One story, or myth, that had mixed itself up with their 
mouldy genealogy, interested the sculptor by its wild, and 
perhaps grotesque, yet not unfascinating peculiarity. He 
caught at it the more eagerly, as it afforded a shadowy and 
whimsical semblance of explanation for the likeness which 
he, with Miriam and Hilda, had seen or fancied, between 
Donatello and the Faun of Praxiteles. 


2S4 


THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENI 


The Monte Beni family, as this legend averred, drew their 
origin from the Pelasgic race, who peopled Italy in times 
that may be called prehistoric. It was the same noble breed 
of men, of Asiatic birth, that settled in Greece; the same 
happy and poetic kindred who dwelt in Arcadia, and — 
whether they ever lived such life or not — enriched the world 
with dreams, at least, and fables, lovely, if unsubstantial, of 
a Golden Age. In those delicious times, when deities and 
demi-gods appeared familiarly on earth, mingling with its 
inhabitants as friend with friend, — when nymphs, satyrs, 
and the whole train of classic faith or fable hardly took 
pains to hide themselves in the primeval woods, — at that 
auspicious period the lineage of Monte Beni had its rise. 
Its progenitor was a being not altogether human, yet par- 
taking so largely of the gentlest human qualities, as to be 
neither awful nor shocking to the imagination. A sylvan 
creature, native among the woods, had loved a mortal 
maiden, and — perhaps by kindness, and the subtile cour- 
tesies which love might teach to his simplicity, or possibly by 
a ruder wooing — had won her to his haunts. In due time, he 
gained her womanly affection; and, making their bridal 
bower, for aught we know, in the hollow of a great tree, the 
pair spent a happy wedded lif e in that ancient neighborhood 
where now stood Donatello’s tower. 

From this union sprang a vigorous progeny that took its 
place unquestioned among human families. In that age, 
however, and long afterwards, it showed the ineffaceable 
lineaments of its wild paternity: it was a pleasant and 
kindly race of men, but capable of savage fierceness, and 
never quite restrainable within the trammels of social law. 
They were strong, active, genial, cheerful as the sunshine, 
passionate as the tornado. Their lives were rendered bliss- 
ful by an unsought harmony with nature. 

But^ as centuries passed away, the Faun’s wild blood had 
285 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


necessarily been attempered with constant intermixtures 
from the more ordinary streams of human life. It lost many 
of its original qualities^ and served, for the most part, only 
to bestow an unconquerable vigor, which kept the family 
from extinction, and enabled them to make their own part 
good throughout the perils and rude emergencies of their 
interminable descent. In the constant wars with which Italy 
was plagued, by the dissensions of her petty states and re- 
publics, there was a demand for native hardihood. 

The successive members of the Monte Beni family,showed 
valor and policy enough, at all events, to keep their heredi- 
tary possessions out of the clutch of grasping neighbors, 
and probably differed very little from the other feudal 
barons with whom they fought and feasted. Such a degree 
of conformity with the manners of the generations, through 
which it survived, must have been essential to the prolonged 
continuance of the race. 

It is well known, however, that any hereditary peculiarity 
— as a supernumerary finger, or an anomalous shape of 
feature, like the Austrian lip — is wont to show itself in a 
family after a very wayward fashion. It skips at its own 
pleasure along the line, and, latent for half a century or 
so, crops out again in a great-grandson. And thus, it was 
said, from a period beyond memory or record, there had ever 
and anon been a descendant of the Monte Benis bearing 
nearly all the characteristics that were attributed to the 
original founder of the race. Some traditions even went so 
far as to enumerate the ears, covered with a delicate fur, and 
shaped like a pointed leaf, among the proofs of authentic 
descent which were seen in these favored individuals. We 
appreciate the beauty of such tokens of a nearer kindred to 
the great family of nature than other mortals bear; but it 
would be idle to ask credit for a statement which might be 
deemed to partake so largely of the grotesque. 

236 


THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENI 


But it was indisputable that^ once in a century^ or oftener, 
a son of Monte Beni gathered into himself the scattered 
qualities of. his race^ and reproduced the character that had 
been assigned to it from immemorial times. Beautiful, 
strong, brave, kindly, sincere, of honest impulses, and en- 
dowed with simple tastes and the love of homely pleasures, 
he was believed to possess gifts by which he could associate 
himself with the wild things of the forests, and with the 
fowls of the air, and could feel a sympathy even with the 
trees, among which it was his joy to dwell. On the other 
hand, there were deficiencies both of intellect and heart, and 
especially, as it seemed, in the development of the higher 
portion of man’s natm*e. These defects were less percep- 
tible in early youth, but showed themselves more strongly 
with advancing age, when, as the animal spirits settled down 
upon a lower level, the representative of the Monte Benis 
was apt to become sensual, addicted to gross pleasures, 
heavy, unsympathizing, and insulated within the narrow 
limits of a surly selfishness. 

A similar change, indeed, is no more than what we con- 
stantly observe to take place in persons who are not careful 
to substitute other graces for those which they inevitably 
lose along with the quick sensibility and joyous vivacity of 
jmuth. At worst, the reigning Count of Monte Beni, as his 
hair grew white, was still a jolly old fellow over his flask 
of wine, — ^the wine that Bacchus himself was fabled to have 
taught his sylvan ancestor how to express, and from what 
choicest grapes, which would ripen only in a certain divinely 
favored portion of the Monte Beni vineyard. 

The family, be it observed, were both proud and ashamed 
of these legends; but whatever part of them they might 
consent to incorporate into their ancestral history, they 
steadily repudiated all that referred to their one distinctive 
feature, the pointed and furry ears. In a great many years 

SS7 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


past, no sober credence had been yielded to the mythical por- 
tion of the pedigree. It might, however, be considered as 
typifying some such assemblage of qualities — in this case, 
chiefly remarkable for their simplicity and naturalness — 
as, when they reappear in successive generations, constitute 
what we call family character. The sculptor found, more- 
over, on the evidence of some old portraits, that the physical 
features of the race had long been similar to what he now 
saw them in Donatello. With accumulating years, it is 
true, the Monte Beni face had a tendency to look grim and 
savage; and, in two or three instances, the family pictures 
glared at the spectator in the eyes like some surly animal, 
that had lost its good-humor when it outlived its playfulness. 

The young Count accorded his guest full liberty to inves- 
tigate the personal annals of these pictured worthies, as well 
as all the rest of his progenitors ; and ample materials were 
at hand in many chests of worm-eaten papers and yellow 
parchments, that had been gathering into larger and dustier 
piles ever since the dark ages. But, to confess the truth, the 
information afforded by these musty documents was so much 
more prosaic than what Kenyon acquired from Tomaso’s 
legends, that even the superior authenticity of the former 
could not reconcile him to its dulness. 

What especially delighted the sculptor was the analogy 
between Donatello’s character, as he himself knew it, and 
those peculiar traits which the old butler’s narrative assumed 
to have been long hereditary in the race. He was amused at 
finding, too, that not only Tomaso but the peasantry of the 
estate and neighboring village recognized his friend as a 
genuine Monte Beni, of the original type. They seemed 
to cherish a great affection for the young Count, and were 
full of stories about his sportive childhood; how he had 
played among the little rustics, and been at once the wildest 
and the sweetest of them all; and how, in his very infancy, 

2S8 


THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENI 


he had plunged into the deep pools of the streamlets and 
never been drowned^ and had clambered to the topmost 
branches of tall trees without ever breaking his neck. No 
such mischance could happen to the sylvan child, because, 
handling all the elements of nature so fearlessly and freely, 
nothing liad either the power or the will to do him harm. 

He grew up, said these humble friends, the playmate not 
only of all mortal kind, but of creatures of the woods; 
although, when Kenyon pressed them for some particulars 
of this latter mode of companionship, they could remember 
little more than a few anecdotes of a pet fox, which used 
to growl and snap at everybody save Donatello himself. 

But they enlarged — and never were weary of the theme 
— upon the blithesome effects of Donatello’s presence in his 
rosy childhood and budding youth. Their hovels had always 
glowed like sunshine when he entered them; so that, as the 
peasants expressed it, their young master had never dark- 
ened a doorway in his life. He was the soul of vintage fes- 
tivals. While he was a mere infant, scarcely able to run 
alone, it had been the custom to make him tread the wine- 
press with his tender little feet, if it were only to crush one 
cluster of the grapes. And the grape-juice that gushed be- 
neath his childish tread, be it ever so small in quantity, suf- 
ficed to impart a pleasant flavor to a whole cask of wine. 
The race Monte Beni — so these rustic chroniclers assured 
the sculptor — had possessed the gift from the oldest of old 
times of expressing good wine from ordinary grapes, and a 
ravishing liquor from the choice growth of their vineyard. 

In a word, as he listened to such tales as these, Kenyon 
could have imagined that the vallej^s and hill-sides about him 
were a veritable Arcadia ; and that Donatello was not merely 
a sylvan Faun, but the genial wine-god in his very person. 
Making many allowances for the poetic fancies of Italian 
peasants, he set it down for fact, that his friend, in a simple 

239 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


way, and among rustic folks, had been an exceedingly de- 
lightful fellow in his jmunger days. 

But the contadini sometimes added, shaking their heads 
and sighing, that the young Count was sadly changed since 
he went to Rome. The village girls now missed the merry 
smile with which he used to greet them. 

The sculptor inquired of his good friend Tomaso, 
whether he, too, had noticed the shadow which was said to 
have recently fallen over Donatello’s life. 

“Ah, yes. Signore!” answered the old butler, “it is even 
so, since he came back from that wicked and miserable city. 
The world has grown either too evil, or else too wise and 
sad, for such men as the old Counts of Monte Beni used to 
be. His very first taste of it, as you see, has changed and 
spoilt my poor young lord. There had not been a single 
count in the family these hundred years or more, who was 
so true a Monte Beni, of the antique stamp, as this poor 
signorino; and now it brings the tears into my eyes to hear 
him sighing over a cup of Sunshine ! Ah, it is a sad world 
now I” 

“Then you think there was a merrier world once?” asked 
Kenyon. ^ 

“Surely, Signore,” said Tomaso; “a merrier world, and^^' 
merrier Counts of Monte Beni to live in it! Such tales of^ 
them as I have heard, when I was a child on my grand- 
father’s knee! The good old man remembered a lord of 
Monte Beni — at least, he had heard of such a one, though I 
will not make oath upon the holy crucifix that my grandsire 
lived in his time — who used to go into the woods and call 
pretty damsels out of the fountains, and out of the trunks of I 
the old trees. That merry lord was known to dance with ; 
them a whole long summer afternoon! When shall we see j 
such frolics in our days?” ! 


240 


THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENI 


“Not soon_, I am afraid/’ acquiesced the sculptor. “You 
are right, excellent Tomaso; the world is sadder now!” 

And, in truth, while our friend smiled at these wild fables, 
he sighed in the same breath to think how the once genial 
earth produces, in every successive generation, fewer flowers 
than used to gladden the preceding ones. Not that the 
modes and seeming possibilities of human enjoyment are 
rarer in our refined and softened era, — on the contrary, they 
never before were nearly so abundant, — ^but that mankind 
are getting so far beyond the childhood of their race that 
they scorn to be happy any longer. A simple and joyous 
character can find no place for itself among the sage and 
sombre figures that would put his unsophisticated cheerful- 
ness to shame. The entire system of man’s affairs, as at 
present established, is built up purposely to exclude the 
careless and happy soul. The very children would upbraid 
the wretched individual who should endeavor to take life 
and the world as — what we might naturally suppose them 
meant for — a place and opportunity for enjoyment. 

It is the iron rule in our day to require an object and a 
purpose in life. It makes us all parts of a complicated 
scheme of progress, which can only result in our arrival at 
a colder and drearier region than we were born in. It in- 
sists upon everybody’s adding somewhat — a mite, perhaps, 
but earned by incessant effort — to an accumulated pile of 
usefulness, of which the only use will be, to burden our 
posterity with even heavier thoughts and more inordinate 
labor than our own. No life now wanders like an unfet- 
tered stream; there is a mill-wheel for the tiniest rivulet to 
turn. We go all wrong, by too strenuous a resolution to go 
all right. 

Therefore it was — so, at least, the sculptor thought, al- 
though partly suspicious of Donatello’s darker misfortune 
— that the young Count found it impossible nowadays to be 

241 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


what his forefathers had been. He could not live their 
healthy life of animal spirits, in their sympathy with nature, 
and brotherhood with all that breathed around them. Na- 
ture, in beast, fowl, and tree, and earth, flood, and sky, is 
what it was of old ; but sin, care, and self-consciousness have 
set the human portion of the world askew; and thus the 
simplest character is ever the soonest to go astray. 

“At any rate, Tomaso,” said Kenyon, doing his best to 
comfort the old man, “let us hope that your young lord will 
still enjoy himself at vintage-time. By the aspect of the 
vineyard, I judge that this will be a famous year for the 
golden wine of Monte Beni. As long as your grapes pro- 
duce that admirable liquor, sad as you think the world, 
neither the Count nor his guests will quite forget to smile.” 

“Ah, Signore,” rejoined the butler with a sigh, “but he 
scarcely wets his lips with the sunny juice.” 

“There is yet another hope,” observed Kenyon; “the young 
Count may fall in love, and bring home a fair and laughing 
wife to chase the gloom out of yonder old, frescoed saloon. 
Do you think he could do a better thing, my good Tomaso.^” 

“Maybe not. Signore,” said the sage butler, looking ear- 
nestly at him; “and, maybe, not a worse!” 

The sculptor fancied that the good old man had it partly 
in his mind to make some remark, or communicate some 
fact, which, on second thoughts, he resolved to keep con- 
cealed in his own breast. He now took his departure cellar- 
ward, shaking his white head .and muttering to himself, and 
did not reappear till dinner-time, when he favored Kenyon, 
whom he had taken far into his good graces, with a choicer 
flask of Sunshine than had yet blessed his palate. 

To say the truth, this golden wine was no unnecessary 
ingredient towards making the life of Monte Beni palatable. 
It seemed a pity that Donatello did not drink a little more 

242 


THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENI 


of it, and go jollily to bed at least, even if he should awake 
with an accession of darker melancholy the next morning. 

Nevertheless, there was no lack of outward means for 
leading an agreeable life in the old villa. Wandering musi- 
cians haunted the precincts of Monte Beni, where they 
seemed to claim a prescriptive right ; tliey made the lawn and 
shrubbery tuneful with the sound of fiddle, harp, and flute, 
and now and then with the tangled squeaking of a bagpipe. 
Improvvisatori likewise came and told tales or recited verses 
to the contadini — among whom Kenyon was often an auditor 
— after their day’s work in the vineyard. Jugglers, too, 
obtained permission to do feats of magic in the hall, where 
they set even the sage Tomaso, and Stella, Girolamo, and 
the peasant-girls from the farm-house, all of a broad grin, 
between merriment and wonder. These good people got 
food and lodging for their pleasant pains, and some of the 
small wine of Tuscany, and a reasonable handful of the 
Grand Duke’s copper coin, to keep up the hospitable re- 
nown of Monte Beni. But very seldom had they the young 
Count as a listener or a spectator. 

There were sometimes dances by moonlight on the lawn, 
but never since he came from Rome did Donatello’s pres- 
ence deepen the blushes of the pretty contadinas, or his foot- 
step weary out the most agile partner or competitor, as once 
it was sure to do. 

Paupers — for this kind of vermin infested the house of 
Monte Beni worse than any other spot in beggar-haunted 
Italy — stood beneath all the windows, making loud suppli- 
cation, or even establishing themselves on the marble steps 
of the grand entrance. They ate and drank, and filled their 
bags, and pocketed the little money that was given them, 
and went forth on their devious ways, showering blessings 
innumerable on the mansion and its lord, and on the souls 
of his deceased forefathers, who had always been just such 

243 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


simpletons as to be compassionate to beggary. But, in 
spite of their favorable prayers, — by v/hich Italian philan- 
thropists set great store, — a cloud seemed to hang over these 
once Arcadian precincts, and to be darkest around the sum- 
mit of the tower where Donatello was wont to sit and brood. 


244 


CHAPTER XXVII 

Myths 

After the sculptor’s arrival^ however, the young Count 
sometimes came down from his forlorn elevation, and 
rambled with him among the neighboring woods and hills. 
He led his friend to many enchanting nooks, with which he 
himself had been familiar in his childhood. But of late, as he 
remarked to Kenyon, a sort of strangeness had overgrown 
them, like clusters of dark shrubbery, so that he hardly rec- 
ognized the places which he had known and loved so well. 

To the sculptor’s eye, nevertheless, they were still rich 
with beauty. They were picturesque in that sweetly im- 
pressive way where wildness, in a long lapse of years, has 
crept over scenes that have been once adorned with the care- 
ful art and toil of man; and when man could do no more for 
them, time and nature came, and wrought hand in hand to 
bring them to a soft and venerable perfection. There grew 
the fig-tree that had run wild and taken to wife the vine, 
which likewise had gone rampant out of all human control; 
so that the two wild things had tangled and knotted them- 
selves into a wild marriage-bond, and hung their various 
progeny — the luscious figs, the grapes, oozy with the South- 
ern juice, and both endowed with a wild flavor that added 
the final charm — on the same bough together. 

In Kenyon’s opinion, never was any other nook so lovely 
as a certain little dell which he and Donatello visited. It 
was hollowed in among the hills, and open to a glimpse of 
the broad, fertile valley. A fountain had its birth here, and 

245 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


fell into a marble basin, which was all covered with moss 
and shaggy with water- weeds. Over the gush of the small 
stream, with an urn in her arms, stood a marble Nymph, 
whose nakedness the moss had kindly clothed as with a gar- 
ment; and the long trails and tresses of the maidenhair had 
done what they could in the poor thing’s behalf, by hang- 
ing themselves about her waist. In former days — it might 
be a remote antiquity — ^this lady of the fountain had first 
received the infant tide into her urn and poured it thence 
into the marble basin. But now the sculptured urn had a 
great crack from top to bottom; and the discontented Nymph 
was compelled to see the basin fill itself through a channel 
which she could not control, although with water long ago 
consecrated to her. 

For this reason, or some other, she looked terribly for- 
lorn; and you might have fancied that the whole fountain 
was but the overflow of her lonely tears. 

“This was a place that I used greatly to delight in,” re- 
marked Donatello, sighing. “As a child, and as a boy, I 
have been very happy here.” 

“And, as a man, I should ask no fitter place to be happy 
in,” answered Kenyon. “But you, my friend, are of such a 
social nature, that I should hardly have thought these lonely 
haunts W’ould take your fancy. It is a place for a poet to 
dream in, and people it with the beings of his imagination.” 

“I am no poet, that I know of,” said Donatello, “but yet, 
as I tell you, I have been very happy here, in the company 
of this fountain and this Nymph. It is said that a Faun, my 
oldest forefather, brought home hither to this very spot a 
human maiden, whom he loved and wedded. This spring of 
delicious water was their household well.” 

“It is a most enchanting fable!” exclaimed Kenyon; “that 
is, if it be not a fact.” 

“And why not a fact.^” said the simple Donatello. “There 
246 


MYTHS 


is^ likewise, another sweet old story connected with this spot. 
But, now that I remember it, it seems to me more sad than 
sweet, though formerly the sorrow, in which it closes, did 
not so much impress me. If I had the gift of tale-telling, 
this one would be sure to interest you mightily.” 

“Pray tell it,” said Kenyon; “no matter whether well or 
ill. These wild legends have often the most powerful charm 
when least artfully told.” 

So the young Count narrated a myth of one of his pro- 
genitors, — he might have lived a century ago, or a thousand 
years, or before the Christian epoch, for anything that 
Donatello knew to the contrary, — ^who had made acquaint- 
ance with a fair creature belonging to this fountain. 
Whether woman or sprite was a mystery, as was all else 
about her, except that her life and soul were somehow in- 
terfused throughout the gushing water. She was a fresh, 
cool, dewy thing, simny and shadowy, full of pleasant little 
mischiefs, fitful and changeable with the whim of the mo- 
ment, but yet as constant as her native stream, which kept 
the same gush and flow forever, while marble crumbled 
over and around it. The f ountain- woman loved the youth, 
— a knight, as Donatello called him, — for, according to the 
legend, his race was akin to hers. At least, whether kin or 
no, there had been friendship and sympathy of old betwixt 
an ancestor of his, with furry ears, and the long-lived lady 
of the fountain. And, after all those ages, she was still as 
young as a May morning, and as frolicsome as a bird upon 
a tree, or a breeze that makes merry with the leaves. 

She taught him how to call her from her pebbly source, 
and they spent many a happy hour together, more especially 
in the fervor of the summer days. For often as he sat wait- 
ing for her by the margin of the spring, she would suddenly 
fall down around him in a shower of sunny rain-drops, with 
a rainbow glancing through them, and forthwith gather her- 

247 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


self up into the likeness of a beautiful girl, laugliing — or 
was it the warble of the rill over the pebbles? — ^to see the 
youth’s amazement. 

Thus, kind maiden that she was, the hot atmosphere be- 
came deliciously cool and fragrant for this favored knight; 
and, furthermore, when he knelt down to drink out of the 
spring, nothing was more common than for a pair of rosy 
lips to come up out of its little depths, and touch his mouth 
with the thrill of a sweet, cool, dewy kiss ! 

‘Tt is a delightful story for the hot noon of your Tuscan 
summer,” observed the sculptor, at this point. “But the de- 
portment of the watery lady must have had a most chilling 
influence in midwinter. Her lover would find it, very liter- 
ally, a cool reception !” 

“I suppose,” said Donatello, rather sulkily, “you are mak- 
ing fun of the story. But I see nothing laughable in the 
thing itself, nor in what you say about it.” 

He went on to relate, that for a long while the knight 
found infinite pleasure and comfort in the friendship of the 
fountain Nymph. In his merriest hours, she gladdened him 
with her sportive humor. If ever he was annoyed with 
earthly trouble, she laid her moist hand upon his brow, and 
charmed the fret and fever quite awa3^ 

But one day — one fatal noontide — the young knight came 
rushing with hasty and irregular steps to the accustomed 
fountain. He called the Nymph; but — no doubt because 
there was something unusual and frightful in his tone — ^she 
did not appear, nor answer him. He flung himself down, 
and w’^ashed his hands and bathed his feverish brow in the 
cool, pure water. And then, there was a sound of woe; it 
might have been a woman’s voice; it might have been only 
the sighing of the brook over the pebbles. The water 
shrank away from the youth’s' hands, and left his brow as 
dry and feverish as before. — 

248 


MYTHS 


Donatello here came to a dead pause. 

“Why did the water shrink from this unhappy knight?” 
inquired the sculptor. 

“Because he had tried to wash off a blood-stain!” said the 
young Count, in a horror-stricken whisper. “The guilty 
man had polluted the pure water. The Nymph might have 
comforted him in sorrow, but could not cleanse his conscience 
of a crime.” 

“And did he never behold her more?” asked Kenyon. 

“Never but once,” replied his friend. “He never beheld 
her blessed face but once again, and then there was a blood- 
stain on the poor Nymph’s brow; it was the stain his guilt 
had left in the fountain where he tried to wash it off. He 
mourned for her his whole life long, and employed the best 
sculptor of the time to carve this statue of the nymph from 
his description of her aspect. But, though my ancestor 
would fain have had the image wear her happiest look, tlie 
artist, unlike yourself, was so impressed with the mournful- 
ness of the story, that, in spite of his I)est eiforts, he made 
her forlorn, and forever weeping, as you see!” 

Kenyon found a certain charm in this simple legend. 
Whether so intended or not, he understood it as an apologue, 
typifying the soothing and genial effects of an habitual 
intercourse with nature, in all ordinary cares and griefs; 
while, on the other hand, her mild influences fall short in 
their effect upon the ruder passions, and are altogether 
powerless in the dread fever-fit or deadly chill of guilt. 

“Do you say,” he asked, “that the Nymph’s face has never 
since been shown to any mortal? Methinks you, by your 
native qualities, are as well entitled to her favor as ever your 
progenitor could have been. Why have you not summoned 
her?” 

“I called her often when I was a silly child,” answered 
249 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


Donatello; and he addedj in an inward voiee^ “Thank 
Heavenj she did not come !” 

“Then you never saw her?” said the sculptor. 

“Never in my life!” rejoined the Count. “No, my dear 
friend, I have not seen the Nymph; although here, by her 
fountain, I used to make many strange acquaintances; for, 
from my earliest childhood, I was familiar with whatever 
creatures haunt the woods. You would have laughed to see 
the friends I had among them; yes, among the wild, nimble 
things, that reckon man their deadliest enemy ! How it was 
first taught me, I cannot tell; but there was a charm — a 
voice, a murmur, a kind of chant — ^by which I called the 
woodland inhabitants, the furry people, and the feathered 
people, in a language that they seemed to understand.” 

“I have heard of such a gift,” responded the sculptor, 
gravely, “but never before met with a person endowed with 
it. Pray, try the charm; and lest I should frighten your 
friends away, I wilt withdraw into this thicket, and merely 
peep at them.” 

“I doubt,” said Donatello, “whether they will remember 
my voice now. It changes, you know, as the boy grows to- 
wards manhood.” 

Nevertheless, as the young Count’s good-nature and easy 
persuadability were among his best characteristics, he set 
about complying with Kenyon’s request. The latter, in his 
concealment among the shrubberies, heard him send forth a 
sort of modulated breath, wild, rude, yet harmonious. It 
struck the auditor as at once the strangest and the most nat- 
ural utterance that had ever reached his ears. Any idle boy, 
it should seem, singing to himself and setting his wordless 
song to no other or more definite tune than the play of his 
own pulses, might produce a sound almost identical with 
this ; and yet, it was as individual as a murmur of the breeze, 
Donatello tried it, over and over again, with many breaks, 

250 


MYTHS 


at firstj and pauses of uncertainty; then with more con- 
fidence^ and a fuller swell, like a wayfarer groping out of 
obscurity into the light, and moving with freer footsteps as 
it brightens around him. 

Anon, his voice appeared to fill the air, yet not with an 
obtrusive clangor. The sound was of a murmurous charac- 
ter, soft, attractive, persuasive, friendly. The sculptor 
fancied that such might have been the original voice and ut- 
terance of the natural man, before the sophistication of the 
human intellect formed what we now call language. In this 
broad dialect — broad as the sympathies of nature — the hu- 
man brother might liave spoken to his inarticulate brother- 
hood that prowl the woods, or soar upon the wing, and have 
been intelligible to such extent as to win their confidence. 

The sound had its pathos too. At some of its simple 
cadences, tlie tears came quietly into Kenyon’s eyes. They 
welled up slowly from his heart, which was thrilling with an 
emotion more delightful than he had often felt before, but 
which he forbore to analyze, lest, if he seized it, it should at 
once perish in his grasp. 

Donatello paused two or three times, and seemed to listen, 
then, recommencing, he poured his spirit and life more ear- 
nestly into the strain. And, finally, — or else the sculptor’s 
hope and imagination deceived him, — soft treads were audi- 
ble upon the fallen leaves. There was a rustling among the 
shrubbery; a whir of wings, moreover, that hovered in the 
air. It may have been all an illusion; but Kenyon fancied 
that he could distinguish the stealthy, cat-like movement of 
some small forest citizen, and that he could even see its 
doubtful shadow, if not really its substance. But, all at 
once, whatever might be the reason, there ensued a hurried 
rush and scamper of little feet; and then the sculptor heard 
a wild, sorrowful cry, and through the crevices of the thicket 
beheld Donatello fling himself on the ground. 

251 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


Emerging from liis hiding-place, he saw no living thing, 
save a brown lizard (it was of the tarantula species) rus- 
tling away through the sunshine. To all present appearance, 
this venomous reptile was the only creature that had re- 
sponded to the young Count’s efforts to renew his inter- 
course with the lower orders of nature. 

“What has happened to you?” exclaimed Kenyon, stoop- 
ing down over his friend, and wondering at the anguish 
which he betrayed. 

“Death, death !” sobbed Donatello. “They know it !” 

He grovelled beside the fountain, in a fit of such passion- 
ate sobbing and weeping, that it seemed as if his heart had 
broken, and spilt its wild sorrows upon the ground. His un- 
restrained grief and childish tears made Kenyon sensible in 
how small a degree the customs and restraints of society had 
really acted upon this young man, in spite of the quietude 
of his ordinary deportment. In response to his friend’s ef- 
forts to console him, he murmured words hardly more articu- 
late than the strange chant which he had so recently been 
breathing into the air. 

“They know it!” was all that Kenyon could yet distin- 
guish, — “they know it !” 

“Who know it?” asked the sculptor. “And what is it they 
know?” 

“They know it!” repeated Donatello, trembling. “They 
shun me! All nature shrinks from me, and shudders at me! 
I live in the midst of a curse, that hems me round with a 
circle of fire! No innocent thing can come near me.” 

“Be comforted, my dear friend,” said Kenyon, kneeling 
beside him. “You labor under some illusion, but no curse. 
As for this strange, natural spell, which you have been ex- 
ercising, and of which I have heard before, though I never 
believed in, nor expected to witness it, I am satisfied that 
you still possess it. It was my own half-concealed presence, 

252 


MYTHS 


no doubt, and some involuntary little movement of mine, that 
scared away your forest friends.” 

“They are friends of mine no longer,” answered Dona- 
tello. 

“We all of us, as we grow older,” rejoined Kenyon, “lose 
somewhat of our proximity to nature. It is the price we pay 
for experience.” 

“A heavy price, then!” said Donatello, rising from the 
ground. “But we will speak no more of it. Forget this 
scene, my dear friend. In your eyes, it must look very ab- 
surd. It is a grief, I presume, to all men, to find the pleas- 
ant privileges and properties of early life departing from 
them. That grief has now befallen me. Well; I shall 
waste no more tears for such a cause!” 

Nothing else made Kenyon so sensible of a change in 
Donatello, as his newly acquired power of dealing with his 
own emotions, and, after a struggle more or less fierce, 
thrusting them down into the prison-cells where he usually 
kept them confined. The restraint, which he now put upon 
himself, and the mask of dull composure which he succeed- 
ed in clasping over his still beautiful and once faun-like 
face, affected the sensitive sculptor more sadly than even the 
unrestrained passion of the preceding scene. It is a very 
miserable epoch, when the evil necessities of life, in our tor- 
tuous world, first get the better of us so far as to compel us 
I to attempt throwing a cloud over our transparency. Sim- 
i plicity increases in value the longer we can keep it, and the 
further we carry it onward into life; the loss of a child’s 
simplicity, in the inevitable lapse of years, causes but a nat- 
j ural sigh or two, because even his mother feared that he 
could not keep it always. But after a young man has 
brought it through his childhood, and has still worn it in liis 
I bosom, not as an early dew-drop, but as a diamond of pure, 
I white, lustre, — it is a pity to lose it, then. And thus, when 

I 253 

I 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


Kenyon saw how much his friend had now to hide^ and how 
well he hid it^ he would have v/ept^ although his tears would 
have been even idler than those which Donatello had just 
shed. 

They parted on the lawn before the house, the Count to 
climb his tower, and the sculptor to read an antique edition 
of Dante, which he had found among some old volumes of 
Catholic devotion, in a seldom- visited room. Tomaso met 
him in the entrance-hall, and showed a desire to speak. 

“Our poor signorino looks very sad to-day!” he said. 

“Even so, good Tomaso,” replied the sculptor. “Would 
that we could raise his spirits a little !” 

“There might be means. Signore,” answered the old but- 
ler, “if one might but be sure that they were the right ones. 
We men are but rough nurses for a sick body or a sick 
spirit.” 

“Women, you would say, my good friend, are better,” said 
the sculptor, struck by an intelligence in the butler’s face. 
“That is possible ! But it depends.” 

“Ah; we will wait a little longer,” said Tomaso, with the 
customary shake of his head. 




254 


CHAPTER XXVIII 
The Owl Tower 

“Will you not show me your tower?” said the sculptor 
one day to his friend. 

“It is plainly enough to be seen, methinks/’ answered the 
Count, with a kind of sulkiness that often appeared in him, 
as one of the little symptoms of inward trouble. 

“Yes; its exterior is visible far and wide,” said Kenyon. 

, “But such a gray, moss-grown tower as this, however valu- 
able as an object of scenery, will certainly be quite as inter- 
I esting inside as out. It cannot be less than six hundred 
years old; the foundations and lower story are much older 
than that, I should judge; and traditions probably cling to 
i the walls within quite as plentifully as the gray and yellow 
I lichens cluster on its face without.” 

! “No doubt,” replied Donatello; “but I know little of such 
; things, and never could comprehend the interest which some 
of you Forestieri take in them. A year or two ago an Eng- 
lish signore, with a veuerable white beard — they say he was 
a magician, too — came hither from as far off as Florence, 
just to see my tower.” 

“Ah, I have seen him at Florence,” observed Kenyon. 
“He is a necromancer, as you say, and dwells in an old man- 
sion of the Knights Templars, close by the Ponte Vecchio, 
with a great many ghostly books, pictures, and antiquities, 
to make the house gloomy, and one bright-eyed little girl, to 
keep it cheerful !” 

“I know him only by his white beard,” said Donatello; 

255 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


^‘but he could have told you a great deal about the tower, 
and the sieges which it has stood, and the prisoners who 
have been confined in it. And he gathered up all the tradi- 
tions of the Monte Beni family, and, among the rest, the sad 
one which I told you at the fountain the other day. He had 
known mighty poets, he said, in his earlier life; and the most 
illustrious of them would have rejoiced to preserve such a 
legend in immortal rhyme, — especialh’^ if he could have had 
some of our wine of Sunshine to help out his inspiration !” 

“Any man might be a poet, as well as Byron, with such 
wine and such a theme,” rejoined the sculptor. “But, shall 
we climb your tower } The thunder-storm gathering yonder 
among the hills will be a spectacle worth witnessing.” 

“Come, then,” said the Count, adding, with a sigh, “it has 
a weary staircase, and dismal chambers, and it is very lone- 
some at the summit !” 

“Like a man’s life, when he has climbed to eminence,” re- 
marked the sculptor; “or, let us rather say, with its difficult 
steps, and the dark prison-cells you speak of, your tower 
resembles the spiritual experience of many a sinful soul, 
which, nevertheless, may struggle upward into the pure air 
and light of Heaven at last!” 

Donatello sighed again, and led the way up into the tower. 

Mounting the broad staircase that ascended from the en- 
trance-hall, they traversed the great wilderness of a house, 
through some obscure passages, and came to a low, ancient 
doorway. It admitted them to a narrow turret-stair which 
zigzagged upward, lighted in its progress by loopholes and 
iron-barred windows. Reaching the top of the first flight, 
the Count threw open a door of worm-eaten oak, and dis- 
closed a chamber that occupied the whole area of the tower. 
It was most pitiably forlorn of aspect, with a brick-paved 
floor, bare holes through the massive walls, grated with iron, 
instead of windows, and for furniture an old stool, which in- 

256 


THE OWL TOWER 


creased the dreariness of the place tenfold, by suggesting 
an idea of its having once been tenanted. 

“This was a prisoner’s cell in tlie old days/’ said Donatel- 
lo; “the white-bearded necromancer, of whom I told you, 
found out that a certain famous monk was confined here, 
about five hundred years ago. He was a very holy man, and 
was afterwards burned at the stake in the Grand-ducal 
Square at Firenze. There have always been stories, Tomaso 
says, of a hooded monk creeping up and down these stairs, 
or standing in the doorway of this chamber. It must needs 
be the ghost of the ancient prisoner. Do you believe in 
ghosts 

“I can hardly tell,” replied Kenyon; “on the whole, I 
think not.” 

“Neither do I,” responded the Count; “for, if spirits ever 
come back, I should surely have met one within these two 
months past. Ghosts never rise! So much I know, and am 
glad to know it !” 

Following the narrow staircase still higher, they came to 
another room of similar size and equally forlorn, but in- 
habited by two personages of a race which from time im- 
memorial have held proprietorship and occupancy in ruined 
towers. These were a pair of owls, who, being doubtless ac- 
quainted with Donatello, showed little sign of alarm at the 
entrance of visitors. They gave a dismal croak or two, and 
hopped aside into the darkest corner, since it was not yet 
their hour to flap duskily abroad. 

“They do not desert me, like my other feathered acquaint- 
ances,” observed the young Count, with a sad smile, alluding 
to the scene which Kenyon had v/itnessed at the fountain- 
side. “When I was a wild, playful boy, the owls did not 
love me half so well.” 

He made no further pause here, but led his friend up an- 
other flight of steps ; while, at every stage, the windows and 

257 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


narrow loopholes afforded Kenyon more extensive eyeshots 
over hill and valley, and allowed him to taste the cool purity 
of mid-atmosphere. At length they reached the topmost 
chamber, directly beneath the roof of the tower. 

“This is my own abode,” said Donatello; “my own owl's 
nest.” 

In fact, tlie room was fitted up as a bedchamber, though 
in a style of the utmost simplicity. It likewise served as an 
oratory ; there being a crucifix in one corner, and a multitude 
of holy emblems, such as Catholics judge it necessary to 
help their devotion withal. Several ugly little prints, repre- 
senting the sufferings of the Saviour, and the martyrdom 
of saints, hung on the wall; and, behind the crucifix, there 
was a good copy of Titian’s Magdalen of the Pitti Palace, 
clad only in the flow of her golden ringlets. She had a con- 
fident look (but it was Titian’s fault, not the penitent 
woman’s), as if expecting to win heaven by the free dis- 
play of her earthly charms. Inside of a glass case appeared 
an image of the sacred Bambino, in the guise of a little 
waxen boy, very prettily made, reclining among flowers, 
like a Cupid, and holding up a heart that resembled a bit 
of red sealing-wax. A small vase of precious marble was 
full of holy water. 

Beneath the crucifix, on a table, lay a human skull, which 
looked as if it might have been dug up out of some old 
grave. But, examining it more closely, Kenyon saw that it 
was carved in gray alabaster, most skilfully done to the 
death, with accurate imitation of the teeth, the sutures, the 
empty eye-caverns, and the fragile little bones of the nose. 
This hideous emblem rested on a cushion of white marble, so 
nicely wrought that you seemed to see the impression of the 
heavy skull in a silken and do^vny substance. 

Donatello dipped his fingers into the holy-water vase, and 
crossed himself. After doing so he trembled. 

258 


THE OWL TOWER 


“I have no right to make the sacred symbol on a sinful 
breast !” he said. 

“On what mortal breast can it be made, then.?” asked the 
sculptor. “Is there one that hides no sin?” 

“But these blessed emblems make you smile, I fear,” re- 
sumed the Count, looking askance at his friend. “You here- 
tics, I know, attempt to pray without even a crucifix to kneel 
at.” 

“I, at least, whom jmu call a heretic, reverence that holy 
symbol,” answered Kenyon. “Wliat I am most inclined to 
murmur at is this death’s-head. I could laugh, moreover, in 
its ugly face! It is absurdly monstrous, my dear friend, 
thus to fling the dead-weight of our mortality upon our im- 
mortal hopes. While we live on earth, ’tis true, we must 
needs carry our skeletons about with us; but, for Heaven’s 
sake, do not let us burden our spirits with them, in our fee- 
ble efforts to soar upward! Believe me, it will change the 
whole aspect of death, if you can once disconnect it, in your 
idea, with that corruption from which it disengages our 
higher part.” 

“I do not well understand you,” said Donatello; and he 
took up the alabaster skull, shuddering, and evidently feel- 
ing it a kind of penance to touch it. “I only know that this 
skull has been in my family for centuries. Old Tomaso has 
a story that it was copied by a famous sculptor from the 
skull of that same unhappy knight who loved the fountain- 
lady, and lost her by a blood-stain. He lived and died with 
a deep sense of sin upon him, and, on his death-bed, he or- 
dained that this token of him should go down to his poster- 
ity. And my forefathers, being a cheerful race of men in 
their natural disposition, found it needful to have the skull 
often before their eyes, because they dearly loved life and 
its enjoyments, and hated the very thought of death. 

259 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


“I am afraid^” said Kenyon^ “they liked it none the 
better, for seeing its face under this abominable mask.’" 

Without further discussion, the Comit led the way up one 
more flight of stairs, at the end of which they emerged upon 
the summit of the tower. The sculptor felt as if his being 
were suddenly magnified a hundred-fold; so wide was the 
Umbrian valley that suddenly opened before him, set in its 
grand framework of nearer and more distant hills. It 
seemed as if all Italy lay under his eyes in that one picture. 
For there was the broad, sminy smile of God, which we 
fancy to, be spread over that favored land more abundantly 
than on other regions, and, beneath it, glowed a most rich 
and varied fertility. The trim vineyards were there, and the 
fig-trees, and the mulberries, and the smoky-hued tracts of 
the olive-orchards; there, too, were fields of every kind of 
grain, among which waved the Indian corn, putting Kenyon 
in mind of the fondly remembered acres of his father’s 
homestead. White villas, gray convents, church-spires, vil- 
lages, towns, each with its battlemented walls and towered 
gateway, were scattered upon this spacious map; a river 
gleamed across it; and lakes opened their blue eyes in its 
face, reflecting heaven, lest mortals should forget that 
better land when they beheld the earth so beautiful. 

What made the valley look still wider was the two or three 
varieties of weather that v/ere visible on its surface, all at 
the same instant of time. Here lay the quiet sunshine ; there 
fell the great black patches of ominous shadow from the 
clouds ; and behind them, like a giant of league-long strides, 
came hurrying the thunder-storm, which had already swept 
midway across the plain. In the rear of the approaching 
tempest, brightened forth again the sunny splendor, which 
its progress had darkened with so terrible a frown. 

All round this majestic landscape, the bald-peaked or 
forest-crowned mountains descended boldly upon the plain. 

260 


THE OWL TOWER 


On many of their spurs and midway declivities, and even on 
their summits, stood cities, some of them famous of old; for 
these had been the seats and nurseries of early art, where 
the flower of beauty sprang out of a rocky soil, and in a 
high, keen atmosphere, when the richest and most sheltered 
gardens failed to nourish it. 

“Thank God for letting me again behold this scene!” said 
the sculptor, a devout man in his way, reverently taking off 
his hat. “I have viewed it from many points, and never 
without as full a sensation of gratitude as my heart seems 
capable of feeling. How it strengthens the poor human 
spirit in its reliance on His providence, to ascend but this lit- 
tle way above the common level, and so attain a somewhat 
wider glimpse of His dealings with mankind ! He doeth all 
things right! His will be done!” 

“You discern something that is hidden from me,” observed 
Donatello, gloomily, yet striving with unwonted grasp to 
catch the analogies which so cheered his friend. “I see sun- 
shine on one spot, and cloud in another, and no reason for 
it in either case. The sun on you; the cloud on me! What 
comfort can I draw from this?” 

“Nay; I cannot preach,” said K.enyon, “with a page of 
lieaven and a page of earth spread wide open before us! 
Only begin to read it, and you will find it interpreting itself 
without the aid of words. It is a great mistake to try to put 
our best thoughts into human language. When we ascend 
into the higher regions of emotion and spiritual enjoyment, 
they are only expressible by such grand hieroglyphics as 
these around us.” 

They stood awhile, contemplating the scene; but, as in- 
evitably happens after a spiritual flight, it was not long be- 
fore the sculptor felt his wings flagging in the rarity of the 
upper atmosphere. He was glad to let himself quietly 
do^mward out of the mid-sky, as it were, and alight on the 

261 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


solid platform of the battlemented tower. He looked about 
him, and beheld growing out of the stone pavement, which 
formed the roof, a little shrub, with green and glossy leaves. 
It was the only green thing there; and Heaven knows how 
its seeds had ever been planted, at that airy height, or how 
it had found nourishment for its small life in the chinks of 
the stones; for it had no earth, and nothing more like soil 
than the crumbling mortar, which had been crammed into 
the crevices in a long-past age. 

Yet the plant seemed fond of its native site; and Dona- 
tello said it had always grown there, from his earliest re- 
membrance, and never, he believed, any smaller or any larger 
than they saw it now. 

“I wonder if the shrub teaches you any good lesson,’* said 
he, observing the interest with which Kenyon examined it. 
*‘If the wide valley has a great meaning, the plant ought to 
have at least a little one; and it has been growing on our 
tower long enough to have learned how to speak it.” 

“Oh, certainly!” answered the sculptor; “the shrub has its 
moral, or it would have perished long ago. And, no doubt, 
it is for your use and edification, since you have had it before 
your eyes all your lifetime, and now are moved to ask what 
may be its lesson.” 

“It teaches me nothing,” said the simple Donatello, stoop- 
ing over the plant, and perplexing himself with a minute 
scrutiny. “But here was a worm that would have killed it; 
an ugly creature, which I will fling over the battlements.” 


262 


CHAPTER XXIX 
On the Battlements 

The sculptor now looked through an embrasure^ and 
threw down a bit of lime^ watching its fall^ till it struck 
upon a stone bench at the rocky foimdation of the tower^ 
and flew into many fragments. 

“Pray pardon me for helping Time to crumble away your 
ancestral walls,” said he. “But I am one of those persons 
who have a natural tendency to climb heights, and to stand 
on the verge of them, measuring the depth below. If I were 
to do just as I like, at this moment, I should fling myself 
down after that bit of lime. It is a very singular tempta- 
tion, and all but irresistible; partly, I believe, because it 
might be so easily done, and partly because such momentous 
consequences would ensue, without my being compelled to 
wait a moment for them. Have you never felt this strange 
impulse of an evil spirit at your back, shoving you towards 
a precipice.^” 

“Ah, no!” cried Donatello, shrinking from the battle- 
mented wall with a face of horror. “I cling to life in a way 
which you cannot conceive ; it has been so rich, so warm, so 
sunny ! — and beyond its verge, nothing but the chilly dark ! 
And then a fall from a precipice is such an awful death!” 

“Nay; if it be a great height,” said Kenyon, “a man 
would leave his life in the air, and never feel the hard 
shock at the bottom.” 

“That is not the way with this kind of death !” exclaimed 
Donatello, in u low, horror-stricken voice, which grew high- 

^63 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


er and more full of emotion as he proceeded. “Imagine a 
fellow-creature^ — breathing, now, and looking you in the 
face, — and now tumbling down, down, down, wdth a long 
shriek wavering after him, all the way! He does not 
leave his life in the air! No; but it keeps in him till 
he thumps against the stones, a horribly long while ; 
then he lies there frightfully quiet, a dead heap of bruised 
flesh and broken bones ! A quiver runs through the crushed 
mass; and no more movement after that! No; not if you 
would give your soul to make him stir a finger! Ah, ter- 
rible! Yes, yes; I would fain fling myself down for the 
very dread of it, that I might endure it once for all, and 
dream of it no more I” 

“How forcibly, how frightfully jmu conceive this!” said 
the sculptor, aghast at the passionate horror which was be- 
trayed in the Count’s words, and still more in his wild ges- 
tures and ghastly look. “Nay, if the height of your tower 
affects your imagination thus, you do wrong to trust your- 
self here in solitude, and in the night-time, and at all un- 
guarded hours. You are not safe in your chamber. It is 
but a step or two; and what if a vivid dream should lead 
you up hither, at midnight, and act itself out as a reality !” 

Donatello had hidden his face in his hands, and was lean- 
ing against the parapet. 

“No fear of that!” said he. “Whatever the dream may 
be, I am too genuine a coward to act out my own death in it.” 

The paroxysm passed away and the two friends continued 
their desultory talk, very much as if no such interruption 
had occurred. Nevertheless, it affected the sculptor with in- 
finite pity to see this young man, who had been born to glad- 
ness as an assured heritage, now involved in a misty bewil- 
derment of grievous thoughts, amid which he seemed to go 
staggering blindfold. Kenyon, not without an unshaped 
suspicion of the definite fact, knew that his condition must 

264 


ON THE BATTLEMENTS 


have resulted from the weight and gloom of life, now first, 
through the agency of a secret trouble, making themselves 
felt on a character that had heretofore breathed only an 
atmosphere of joy. The effect of this hard lesson, upon 
Donatello’s intellect and disposition, was very striking. It 
was perceptible that he had already had glimpses of strange 
and subtle matters in those dark caverns, into which all men 
must descend, if they would know anything beneath the sur- 
face and illusive pleasures of existence. And when they 
emerge, though dazzled and blinded by the first glare of 
daylight, they take truer and sadder views of life forever 
afterwards. 

From some mysterious source, as the sculptor felt assured, 
a soul had been inspired into the young Count’s simplicity, 
since their intercourse in Eome. He now showed a far deep- 
er sense, and an intelligence that began to deal with high 
subjects, though in a feeble and childish way. He evinced, 
too, a more definite and nobler individuality, but developed 
out of grief and pain, and fearfully conscious of the pangs 
that had given it birth. Every human life, if it ascends to 
truth or delves down to reality, must undergo a similar 
change; but sometimes, perhaps, the instruction comes 
without the sorrow ; and oftener the sorrow teaches no lesson 
that abides with us. In Donatello’s case, it was pitiful, and 
almost ludicrous, to observe the confused struggle that he 
made; how completely he was taken by surprise; how ill- 
prepared he stood, on this old battle-field of the world, to 
fight with such an inevitable foe as mortal calamity, and sin 
for its stronger ally. 

“And yet,” thought Kenyon, “the poor fellow bears him- 
self like a hero, too ! If he would only tell me his trouble, 
or give me an opening to speak frankly about it, I might 
help him; but he finds it too horrible to be uttered, and 
fancies himself the only mortal that ever felt the anguish 

265 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


of remorse. Yes; he believes that nobody ever endured his 
agony before; so that — sharp enough in itself — it has all 
the additional zest of a torture just invented to plague him 
individually.” 

The sculptor endeavored to dismiss the painful subject 
from his mind; and^ leaning against the battlements, he 
turned his face southward and westward, and gazed across 
the breadth of the valley. His thoughts flew far beyond 
even those wide boundaries, taking an air-line from Dona- 
tello’s tower to another turret that ascended into the sky of 
the summer afternoon, invisibly to him, above the roofs of 
distant Rome. Then rose tumultuously into his conscious- 
ness that strong love for Hilda, which it was his habit to 
confine in one of the heart’s inner chambers, because he had 
found no encouragement to bring it forward. But now, he 
felt a strange pull at his heartstrings. It could not have 
been more perceptible, if all the way between these battle- 
ments and Hilda’s dove-cote had stretched an exquisitely 
sensitive cord, which, at the hither end, was knotted with his 
aforesaid heartstrings, and, at the remoter one, was grasped 
by a gentle hand. His breath grew tremulous. He put his 
hand to his breast; so distinctly did he seem to feel that cord 
drawn once, and again, and again, as if — ^though still it was 
bashfully intimated — ^there were an importunate demand for 
his presence. Oh, for the white wings of Hilda’s doves, that 
he might have flown thither, and alighted at the Virgin’s 
shrine ! 

But lovers, and Kenyon knew it well, project so lifelike 
a copy of their mistresses out of their own imaginations, 
that it can pull at the heartstrings almost as perceptibly as 
the genuine original. No airy intimations are to be trusted; 
no evidences of responsive affection less positive than whis- 
pered and broken words, or tender pressures of the hand, 
allowed and half returned ; or glances, that distil many pas- 

266 


ON THE BATTLEMENTS 


sionate avowals into one gleam of richly colored light. Even 
these should be weighed rigorously, at the instant; for, in 
another instant, the imagination seizes on them as its prop- 
erty, and stamps them with its own arbitrary value. But 
Hilda’s maidenly reserve had given her lover no such tokens, 
to be interpreted either by bis hopes or fears. 

“Yonder, over mountain and valley, lies Rome,” said the 
sculptor; “shall you return thither in the autumn .f*” 

“Never! I hate Rome,” answered Donatello; “and have 
good cause.” 

“And yet it was a pleasant winter that we spent there,” 
observed Kenyon, “and with pleasant friends about us. You 
would meet them again there, — all of them.” 

“All.^” asked Donatello. 

“All, to the best of my belief,” said the sculptor ; “but you 
need not go to Rome to seek them. If there were one of 
those friends whose lifetime was twisted with your own, I 
am enough of a fatalist to feel assured that you will meet 
that one again, wander whither you may. Neither can we 
escape the companions whom Providence assigns for us, by 
climbing an old tower like this.” 

“Yet the stairs are steep and dark,” rejoined the Count; 
“none but yourself would seek me here, or find me, if they 
sought.” 

As Donatello did not take advantage of this opening 
which his friend had kindly afforded him to pour out his hid- 
den troubles, the latter again threw aside the subject, and 
returned to the enjoyment of the scene before him. The 
thunder-storm, which he had beheld striding across the val- 
ley, had passed to the left of Monte Beni, and was continu- 
ing its march towards the hills that formed the boundary on 
the eastward. Above the whole valley, indeed, the sky was 
heavy with tumbling vapors, interspersed with which were 
tracts of blue, vividly brightened by the sun; but, in the 

267 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


eastj where the tempest was yet trailing its ragged skirts, 
lay a dusky region of cloud and sullen mist, in which some 
of the hills appeared of a dark-purple hue. Others became 
so indistinct, that the spectator could not tell rocky height 
from impalpable cloud. Far into this misty cloud-region, 
however, — within the domain of chaos, as it were, — hill-tops 
were seen brightening in the sunshine; they looked like frag- 
ments of the world, broken adrift and based on nothingness, 
or like portions of a sphere destined to exist, but not yet 
finally compacted. 

The sculptor, habitually drawing many of the images and 
illustrations of his thoughts from the plastic art, fancied 
that the scene represented the process of the Creator, when 
he held the new, imperfect earth in his hand and 
modelled it. 

“What a magic is in mist and vapor among the moun- 
tains !” he exclaimed. “With their help, one single scene 
becomes a thousand. The cloud-scenery gives such variety 
to a hilly landscape that it would be worth while to journal- 
ize its aspect from hour to hour. A cloud, however, — as I 
have myself experienced, — is apt to grow solid and as heavy 
as a stone the instant that you take in hand to describe it. 
But, in my own heart, I have found great use in clouds. 
Such silvery ones as those to the northward, for example, 
have often suggested sculpturesque groups, figures, and at- 
titudes ; they are especially rich in attitudes of living repose, 
which a sculptor only hits upon by the rarest good fortune. 
When I go back to my dear native land, the clouds along the 
horizon will be my only gallery of art V* 

“I can see cloud-shapes, too,*’ said Donatello ; “yonder is 
one that shifts strangelj’-; it has been like people whom I 
knew. And now, if I watch it a little longer, it will take the 
figure of a monk reclining, with his cowl about his head and 

26S 


ON THE BATTLEMENTS 

drawn partly over his face, and — well! did I not tell you 

SO 

“I think/’ remarked Kenyon^ “we can hardly be gazing 
at the same cloud. What I behold is a reclining figure, to be 
sure, but feminine, and with a despondent air, wonderfully 
well expressed in the wavering outline from head to foot. 

, It moves my very heart by something indefinable that it 
suggests.” 

“I see the figure, and almost the face,” said the Count; 
j adding, in a lower voice, “it is Miriam’s !” 

! “No, not Miriam’s,” answered the sculptor. 

While the two gazers thus foimd their own reminiscences 
1 and presentiments floating among the clouds, the day drew 
to its close, and now showed them the fair spectacle of an 
Italian simset. The sky was soft and bright, but not so 
gorgeous as Kenyon had seen it, a thousand times, in Ameri- 
ca; for there the western sky is wont to be set aflame with 
i breadths and depths of color with which poets seek in vain 
to dye their verses, and which painters never dare to copy. 
As beheld from the tower of Monte Beni, the scene was 
i tenderly magnificent, with mild gradations of hue, and a 
i lavish outpouring of gold, but rather such gold as we see 
I on the leaf of a bright flower than the burnished glow of 
: metal from the mine. Or, if metallic, it looked airy and un- 
substantial, like the glorified dreams of an alchemist. And 
speedily — more speedily than in our own clime — came the 
twilight, and, brightening through its gray transparency, the 
stars. 

A swarm of minute insects that had been hovering all day 
round the battlements were noAv swept away by the fresh- 
ness of a rising breeze. The two owls in the chamber be- 
neath Donatello’s uttered their soft melancholy cry, — which, 
with national avoidance of harsh sounds, Italian owls substi- 
tute for the hoot of their kindred in other countries, — and 

269 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


flew darkling forth among the shrubbery. A convent-bell 
rang out near at hand^ and was not only echoed among the 
hills, but answered by another bell, and still another, which 
doubtless had farther and farther responses, at various dis- 
tances along the valley; for, like the English drumbeat 
around the globe, there is a chain of convent-bells from end 
to end, and cross-wise, and in all possible directions over 
priest-ridden Italy. 

“Come,” said the sculptor, “the evening air grows cool. 
It is time to descend.” 

“Time for you, my friend,” replied the Count; and he 
hesitated a little before adding, “I must keep a vigil here 
for some hours longer. It is my frequent custom to keep 
vigils; and sometimes the thought occurs to me whether it 
were not better to keep them in yonder convent, the bell of 
which just now seemed to summon me. Should I do wisely, 
do you think, to exchange this old tower for a cell?” 

“What! Turn monk?” exclaimed his friend. “A horrible 
idea !” 

“True,” said Donatello, sighing. “Therefore, if at all, I 
purpose doing it.” 

“Then think of it no more, for Heaven’s sake!” cried the 
sculptor. “There are a thousand better and more poignant 
methods of being miserable than that, if to be miserable 
is what you wish. Nay; I question whether a monk keeps 
himself up to the intellectual and spiritual height which 
misery implies. A monk- — I judge from their sensual physi- 
ognomies, which meet me at every turn — is inevitably a 
beast ! Their souls, if they have any to begin with, perish 
out of them, before their sluggish, swinish existence is half 
done. Better, a million times, to stand star-gazing on these 
airy battlements, than to smother your new germ of a higher 
life in a monkish cell !” 

“You make me tremble,” said Donatello, “by your bold 
270 


ON THE BATTLEMENTS 

aspersion of men who have devoted themselves to God’s ser- 
vice !” 

“They serve neither God nor man^ and themselves least of 
all, though their motives be utterly selfish,” replied Kenyon. 
“Avoid the convent, my dear friend, as you would shun the 
death of the soul! But, for my own part, if I had an in- 
supportable burden, — if, for any cause, I were bent upon 
sacrificing every earthly hope as a peace-offering towards 
Heaven, — I would make the wide world my cell, and good 
deeds to mankind my prayer. Many penitent men have done 
this, and found peace in it.” 

“Ah, but you are a heretic !” said the Count. 

Yet his face brightened beneath the stars; and, looking 
at it through the twilight, the sculptor’s remembrance went 
back to that scene in the Capitol, where, both in features 
and expression, Donatello had seemed identical with the 
Faun. And still there was a resemblance; for now, when 
first the idea was suggested of living for the welfare of his 
fellow-creatures, the original beauty, which sorrow had 
partly effaced, came back elevated and spiritualized. In 
the black depths, the Faun had found a soul, and was strug- 
gling with it towards the light of heaven. 

The illumination, it is true, soon faded out of Donatello’s 
face. The idea of life-long and unselfish effort was too high 
to be received by him with more than a momentary compre- 
hension. An Italian, indeed, seldom dreams of being phil- 
anthropic, except in bestowing alms among the paupers, who 
appeal to his beneficence at every step ; nor does it occur to 
him that there are fitter modes of propitiating Heaven than 
by penances, pilgrimages, and offerings at shrines. Per- 
haps, too, their system has its share of moral advantages; 
they, at all events, cannot well pride themselves, as our own 
more energetic benevolence is apt to do, upon sharing in the 

271 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


counsels of Providence and kindly helping out its otherwise 
impracticable designs. 

And now the broad valley twinkled with lights^ that glim- 
mered through its duskiness_, like the fire-flies in the garden 
of a Florentine palace. A gleam of lightning from the rear 
of the tempest showed the circumference of hills^ and the 
great space between^ as the last cannon-flash of a retreating 
army reddens across the field where it has fought. The 
sculptor was on the point of descending the turret-stair, 
when, somewhere in the darkness that lay beneath them, a 
woman’s voice was heard, singing a low, sad strain. 

“Hark!” said he, laying his hand on Donatello’s arm. 

And Donatello had said, “Hark!” at the same instant. 

The song, if song it could be called, that had only a wild 
rhythm, and flowed forth in the fitful measure of a wind- 
harp, did not clothe itself in the sharp brilliancy of the 
Italian tongue. The words, so far as they could be distin- 
guished, were German, and therefore unintelligible to the 
Count, and hardly less so to the scupltor; being softened 
and molten, as it were, into the melancholy richness of the 
voice that sung them. It was as the murmur of a soul be- 
wildered amid the sinful gloom of earth, and retaining only 
enough memory of a better state to make sad music of the 
wail, which would else have been a despairing shriek. Never 
was there profounder pathos than breathed through that 
mysterious voice; it brought the tears into the sculptor’s 
eyes, with remembrances and forebodings of whatever sor- 
row he had felt or apprehended; it made Donatello sob, as 
chiming in with the anguish that he found unutterable, and 
giving it the expression which he vaguely sought. 

But, when the emotion was at its profoundest depth, the 
voice rose out of it, yet so gradually that a gloom seemed to 
pervade it, far upward from the abyss, and not entirely to 
fall away as it ascended into a higher and purer region. At 

272 


ON THE BATTLEMENTS 


last^ the auditors would have fancied that the melody, with 
its rich sweetness all there, and much of its sorrow gone, was 
floating around the very summit of the tower. 

“Donatello,” said the sculptor, when there was silence 
again, “had that voice no message for your ear?” 

“I dare not receive it,” said Donatello; “the anguish of 
which it spoke abides with me; the hope dies away with the 
breath that brought it hither. It is not good for me to hear 
that voice.” 

The sculptor sighed, and left the poor penitent keeping 
his vigil on the tower. 


273 


CHAPTER XXX 
Donatello’s Bust 

Kenyon^ it will be remembered^ had asked Donatello’s 
permission to model his bust. The work had now made con-^ 
siderable progress^ and necessarily kept the sculptor’s 
thoughts brooding much and often upon his host’s personal 
characteristics. These it was his difficult office to bring out 
from their depths, and interpret them to all men, showing 
them what they could not discern for themselves, yet must 
be compelled to recognize at a glance, on the surface of a 
block of marble. 

He had never undertaken a portrait-bust which gave him 
so much trouble as Donatello’s ; not that there was any spe- 
cial difficulty in hitting the likeness, though even in this re- 
spect the grace and harmony of the features seemed incon- 
sistent with a prominent expression of individuality; but he 
was chiefly perplexed how to make this genial and kind type 
of countenance the index of the mind within. His acuteness 
and his sympathies, indeed, were both somewhat at fault in 
their eff’orts to enlighten him as to the moral phase through 
which the Count was now passing. If at one sitting he 
caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a genuine and per- 
manent trait, it would probably be less perceptible on a sec- 
ond occasion, and perhaps have vanished entirely at a third. 
So evanescent a show of character threw the sculptor into 
despair; not marble or clay, but cloud and vapor, was the 
material in which it ought to be represented. Even the pon- 
derous depression which constantly weighed upon Dona- 

274 ) 


DONATELLO’S BUST 


tello’s heart could not compel him into the kind of repose 
which the plastic art requires. 

Hopeless of a good result, Kenyon gave up all preconcep- 
tions about the character of his subject, and let his hands 
work uncontrolled with the clay, somewhat as a spiritual 
medium, while holding a pen, yields it to an unseen guid- 
ance other than that of her own will. Now and then he 
fancied that this plan was destined to be the successful one. 
A skill and insight beyond his consciousness seemed occa- 
sionally to take up the task. The mystery, the miracle, of 
imbuing an inanimate substance with thought, feeling, and 
all the intangible attributes of the soul, appeared on the 
verge of being wrought. And now, as he flattered himself, 
the true image of his friend was about to emerge from the 
facile material, bringing with it more of Donatello’s char- 
acter than the keenest observer could detect at any one mo- 
ment in the face of the original. Vain expectation! some 
touch, whereby the artist thought to improve or hasten the 
result, interfered with the design of his unseen spiritual as- 
sistant, and spoilt the whole. There was still the moist, 
brown clay, indeed, and the features of Donatello, but with- 
out any semblance of intelligent and sympathetic life. 

“The difficulty will drive me mad, I verily believe !” cried 
the sculptor, nervously. “Look at the wretched piece of 
work yourself, my dear friend, and tell me whether you rec- 
ognize any manner of likeness to your inner man?” 

“None,” replied Donatello, speaking the simple truth. 
“It is like looking a stranger in the face.” 

This frankly unfavorable testimony so wrought with the 
sensitive artist, that he fell into a passion with the stubborn 
image, and cared not what might happen to it thencefor- 
ward. Wielding that wonderful power which sculptors 
possess over moist clay, however refractory it may show 
itself in certain respects, he compressed, elongated, widened, 

275 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


and otherwise altered the features of the bust in mere reck- 
lessness,, and at every change inquired of the Count whether 
the expression became anywise more satisfactory. 

“Stop!” cried Donatello, at last, catching the sculptor’s 
hand. “Let it remain so !” 

By some accidental handling of the clay, entirely inde- 
pendent of his own will, Kenyon had given the countenance 
a distorted and violent look, combining animal fierceness 
with intelligent hatred. Had Hilda, or had Miriam, seen 
the bust, with the expression which it had now assumed, they 
might have recognized Donatello’s face as they beheld it at 
that terrible moment when he held his victim over the edge 
of the precipice. 

“What have I done.^” said the sculptor, shocked at his 
own casual production. “It were a sin to let the clay which 
bears your features harden into a look like that. Cain 
never wore an uglier one.” 

“For that very reason, let it remain !” answered the Count, 
who had grown pale as ashes at the aspect of his crime, thus 
strangely presented to him in another of the many guises 
under which guilt stares the criminal in the face. “Do not 
alter it ! Chisel it, rather, in eternal marble ! I will set it up 
in my oratory and keep it continually before my eyes. Sad- 
der and more horrible is a face like this, alive with my own 
crime, than the dead skull which my forefathers handed 
down to me !” 

But, without in the least heeding Donatello’s remon- 
strances, the sculptor again applied his artful fingers to the 
clay, and compelled the bust to dismiss the expression that 
had so startled them both. 

“Believe me,” said he, turning his eyes upon his friend, 
full of grave and tender sympathy, “you know not what is 
requisite for your spiritual growth, seeking, as you do, to 
keep your soul perpetually in the unwholesome region of re- 

276 


DONATELLO’S BUST 


morse. It was needful for you to pass through that dark 
valley, but it is infinitely dangerous to linger there too long; 
there is poison in the atmosphere, when we sit down and 
brood in it, instead of girding up our loins to press onward. 
Not despondency, not slothful anguish, is what you now re- 
quire, — but elFort! Has there been an unalterable evil in 
your young life ? Then crowd it out with good, or it will lie 
corrupting there forever, and cause your capacity for better 
things to partake its noisome corruption 

“You stir up many thoughts,’' said Donatello, pressing his 
hand upon his brow, “but the multitude and the whirl of 
them make me dizzy.” 

They now left the sculptor’s temporary studio, without 
observing that his last accidental touches with which he 
hurriedly effaced the look of deadly rage, had given the 
bust a higher and sweeter expression than it had hitherto 
worn. It is to be regretted that Kenyon had not seen it; 
for only an artist, perhaps, can conceive the irksomeness, 
the irritation of brain, the depression of spirits, that re- 
sulted from his failure to satisfy himself, after so much 
toil and thought as he had bestowed on Donatello’s bust. 
In case of success, indeed, all this thoughtful toil would 
have been reckoned, not only as well bestowed, but as among 
the happiest hours of his life; whereas, deeming himself to 
have failed, it was just so much of life that had better 
never have been lived; for thus does the good or ill result of 
his labor throw back sunshine or gloom upon the artist’s 
mind. The sculptor, therefore, would have done well to 
glance again at his work; for here were still the features of 
the antique Faun, but now illuminated with a higher mean- 
ing, such as the old marble never bore. 

Donatello having quitted him, Kenyon spent the rest of 
the day strolling about the pleasant precincts of Monte 
Beni, where the summer was now so far advanced that it 

277 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


began, indeed, to partake of the ripe wealth of autumn. 
Apricots had long been abundant, and had passed away, and 
plums and cherries along with them. But now came great, 
juicy pears, melting and delicious, and peaches of goodly 
size and tempting aspect, though cold and watery to the 
palate, compared with the sculptor’s rich reminiscences of 
that fruit in America. The purple figs had already en- 
joyed their day, and the white ones were luscious now. The 
contadini (who, by this time, knew Kenyon well) found 
many clusters of ripe grapes for him, in every little globe 
of which was included a fragrant draught of the sunny 
Monte Beni wine. 

Unexpectedly, in a nook, close by the farm-house, he hap- 
pened upon a spot where the vintage had actually com- 
menced. A great heap of early ripened grapes had been 
gathered, and thrown into a mighty tub. In the middle of 
it stood a lusty and jolly contadino, nor stood, merely, but 
stamped with all his might, and danced amain; while the 
red juice bathed his feet, and threw its foam midway up 
his brown and shaggy legs. Here, then, was the very pro- 
cess that shows so picturesquely in Scripture and in poetry, 
of treading out the wine-press and dyeing the feet and gar- 
ments with the crimson effusion as with the blood of a bat- 
tle-field. The memory of the process does not make the 
Tuscan wine taste more deliciously. The contadini hos- 
pitably offered Kenyon a sample of the new liquor, that had 
already stood fermenting for a day or two. He had tried a 
similar draught, however, in years past, and was little in- 
clined to make proof of it again; for he knew that it would 
be a sour and bitter juice, a wine of woe and tribulation, 
and that the more a man drinks of such liquor, the sorrier 
he is likely to be. 

The scene reminded the sculptor of our New England 
vintages, where the big piles of golden and rosy apples lie 

278 


DONATELLO’S BUST 


under the orchard trees, in the mild, autumnal sunshine; 
and the creaking cider-mill, set in motion by a circumgyra- 
tory horse, is all a-gush with the luscious juice. To speak 
frankly, the cider-making is the more picturesque sight of 
the two, and the new, sweet cider an infinitely better drink 
than the ordinary, unripe Tuscan wine. Such as it is, how- 
ever, the latter fills thousands upon thousands of small, flat 
barrels, and, still growing thinner and sharper, loses the lit- 
tle life it had, as wine, and becomes apotheosized as a more 
praiseworthy vinegar. 

Yet all these vineyard scenes, and the processes connected 
with the culture of the grape, had a flavor of poetry about 
them. The toil that produces those kindly gifts of nature 
which are not the substance of life, but its luxury, is unlike 
other toil. We are inclined to fancy that it does not bend 
the' sturdy frame and stiffen the overwrought muscles, like 
the labor that is devoted in sad, hard earnest to raise grain 
for sour bread. Certainly, the sunburnt young men and 
dark-cheeked, laughing girls, who weeded the rich acres of 
Monte Beni, might well enough have passed for inhabitants 
of an unsophisticated Arcadia. Later in the season, when 
the true vintage-time should come, and the wine of Sunshine 
gush into the vats, it was hardly too wild a dream that 
Bacchus himself might revisit the haunts which he loved of 
old. But, alas! where now would he find the Faun with 
whom we see him consorting in so many an antique group ? 

Donatello’s remorseful anguish saddened this primitive 
and delightful life. Kenyon had a pain of his own, more- 
over, although not all a pain, in the never-quiet, never-satis- 
fied yearning of his heart towards Hilda. He was author- 
ized to use little freedom towards that shy maiden, even in 
his visions ; so that he almost reproached himself when some- 
times his imagination pictured in detail the sweet years that 
they might spend together, in a retreat like this. It had 

279 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


just that rarest quality of remoteness from the actual and 
ordinary world — a remoteness through which all delights 
might visit them freely^ sifted from all troubles — which 
lovers so reasonably insist upon, in their ideal arrange- 
ments for a happy union. It is possible, indeed, that 
even Donatello’s grief and Kenyon’s pale, sunless affec- 
tion lent a charm to Monte Beni, which it would not 
have retained amid a more abundant joyousness. The 
sculptor strayed amid its vineyards and orchards, its dells 
and tangled shrubberies, with somewhat the sensations of an 
adventurer who should find his way to the site of ancient 
Eden, and behold its loveliness through the transparency of 
that gloom which has been brooding over those haunts of 
innocence ever since the fall. Adam saw it in a brighter 
sunshine, but never knew the shade of pensive beauty which 
Eden won from his expulsion. 

It was in the decline of the afternoon that Kenyon re- 
turned from his long, musing ramble. Old Tomaso — ^be- 
tween whom and himself for some time past there had been 
a mysterious understanding — met him in the entrance-hall, 
and drew him a little aside. 

“The signorina would speak with you,’^ he whispered. 

“In the chapel.^” asked the sculptor. 

“No; in the saloon beyond it,” answered the butler: “the 
entrance — you once saw the signorina appear through it — 
is near the altar, hidden behind the tapestry.” 

Kenyon lost no time in obeying the summons. 


280 


CHAPTER XXXI 
The Marble Saloon 

In an old Tuscan villa^ a chapel ordinarily makes one 
among the numerous apartments; though it often happens 
that the door is permanently closed^ the key lost, and the 
place left to itself, in dusty sanctity, like that chamber i)i 
man’s heart where he hides his religious awe. This was 
very much the case with the chapel of Monte Beni. One 
rainy day, however, in his wanderings through the great, 
intricate house, Kenyon had unexpectedly found his way 
into it, and been impressed by its solemn aspect. The 
arched windows, high upward in the wall, and darkened 
with dust and cobweb, threw down a dim light that showed 
the altar, with a picture of a martyrdom above, and some 
tall tapers ranged before it. They had apparently been 
lighted, and burned an hour or two, and been extinguished 
perhaps half a century before. The marble vase at the em 
trance held some hardened mud at the bottom, accruing 
from the dust that had settled in it during the gradual 
evaporation of the holy water ; and a spider (being an insect 
that delights in pointing the moral of desolation and neg- 
lect) had taken pains to weave a prodigiously thick tis- 
sue across the circular brim. An old family banner, tat- 
tered by the moths, drooped from the vaulted roof. In 
niches there were some mediaeval busts of Donatello’s for- 
gotten ancestry; and among them, it might be, the forlorn 
visage of that hapless knight between whom and the foun- 
tain-nymph had occurred sueh tender love-passages. 

281 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


Throughout all the jovial prosperity of Monte Beni, this 
one spot within the domestic walls had kept itself silent, 
stern, and sad. When the individual or the family retired 
from song and mirth, they here sought those realities which 
men do not invite their festive associates to share. And 
here, on the occasion above referred to, the sculptor had dis- 
covered — accidentally, so far as he was concerned, though 
with a purpose on her part — that there was a guest under 
Donatello’s roof, whose presence the Count did not suspect. 
An interview had since taken place, and he was now sum- 
moned to another. 

He crossed the chapel, in compliance with Tomaso’s in- 
structions, and, passing through the side entrance, found 
himself in a saloon, of no great size, but more magnificent 
than he had supposed the villa to contain. As it was 
vacant, Kenyon had leisure to pace it once or twice, and ex- 
amine it with a careless sort of scrutiny, before any person 
appeared. 

This beautiful hall was floored with rich marbles, in artis- 
tically arranged figures and compartments. The walls, 
likewise, were almost entirely cased in marble of various 
kinds, the prevalent variety being giallo antico, intermixed 
with verd-antique, and others equally precious. The splen- 
dor of the giallo antico, however, was what gave character 
to the saloon ; and the large and deep niches, apparently in- 
tended for full-length statues, along the walls, were lined 
with the same costly material. Without visiting Italy, one 
can have no idea of the beauty and magnificence that are 
produced by these fittings-up of polished marble. With- 
out such experience, indeed, we do not even know what mar- 
ble means, in any sense, save as the white limestone of which 
we carve our mantel-pieces. This rich hall of Monte Beni, 
moreover, was adorned, at its upper end, with two pillars 
that seemed to consist of Oriental alabaster; and wherever 

282 


THE MARBLE SALOON 


there was a space vacant of precious and variegated marble, 
it was frescoed with ornaments in arabesque. Above, there 
was a coved and vaulted ceiling, glowing with pictured 
scenes, which affected Kenyon with a vague sense of splen- 
dor, without his twisting his neck to gaze at them. 

It is one of the special excellences of such a saloon of 
polished and richly colored marble, that decay can never 
tarnish it. Until the house crumbles down upon it, it shines 
indestructibly, and, with a little dusting, looks just as bril- 
liant in its three hundredth year as the day after the final 
slab of giallo antico was fitted into the wall. To the sculp- 
tor, at this first view of it, it seemed a hall where the sun 
was magically imprisoned, and must always shine. He an- 
ticipated Miriam’s entrance, arrayed in queenly robes, and 
beaming with even more than the singular beauty that had 
heretofore distinguished her. 

While this thought was passing through his mind, the 
pillared door, at the upper end of the saloon, was partly 
opened, and Miriam appeared. She was very pale, and 
dressed in deep mourning. As she advanced towards the 
sculptor, the feebleness of her step was so apparent that he 
made haste to meet her, apprehending that she might sink 
down on the marble floor, without the instant support of his 
arm. 

But, with a gleam of her natural self-reliance, she de- 
clined his aid, and, after touching her cold hand to his, went 
and sat down on one of the cushioned divans that were 
ranged against the wall. 

‘‘You are very ill, Miriam!” said Kenyon, much shocked 
at her appearance. “I had not thought of this.” 

“No; not so ill as I seem to you,” she answered; adding 
despondently, “yet I am ill enough, I believe, to die, unless 
some change speedily occurs.” 

283 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


“What, then, is your disorder?” asked the sculptor; “and 
what the remedy?” 

“The disorder!” repeated Miriam. “There is none that 
I know of save too much life and strength, without a pur- 
pose for one or the other. It is my too redundant energy 
that is slowly — or perhaps rapidly — wearing me away, be- 
cause I can apply it to no use. The object, which I am 
bound to consider my only one on earth, fails me utterly. 
The sacrifice which I yearn to make of myself, my hopes, 
my everything, is coldly put aside. Nothing is left for me 
but to brood, brood, brood, all day, all night, in unprofitable 
longings and repinings.” 

“This is very sad, Miriam,” said Kenyon. 

“Ay, indeed; I fancy so,” she replied, with a short un- 
natural laugh. 

“With all your activity of mind,” resumed he, “so fertile 
in plans as I have known you, can you imagine no method of 
bringing your resources into play?” 

“My mind is not active any longer,” answered Miriam, 
in a cold, indifferent tone. “It deals with one thought and 
no more. One recollection paralyzes it. It is not remorse ; 
do not think it 1 I put myself out of the question, and feel 
neither regret nor penitence on my own behalf. But what 
benumbs me, what robs me of all power, — it is no secret for 
a woman to tell a man, yet I care not though you know it, — 
is the certainty that I am, and must ever be, an object of 
horror in Donatello’s sight.” 

The sculptor — a young man, and cherishing a love which 
insulated him from the wild experiences which some men 
gather — was startled to perceive how Miriam’s rich, ill- 
regulated nature impelled her to fling herself, conscience and 
all, on one passion, the object of which intellectually seemed 
far beneath her. 


284 


THE MARBLE SALOON 


“How have you obtained the certainty of which you 
speak?” asked he^ after a pause. 

“Oh, by a sure token,” said Miriam; “a gesture, merely; 
a shudder, a cold shiver, that ran through him one sunny 
morning when his hand happened to touch minel But it 
was enough.” 

“I firmly believe, Miriam,” said the sculptor, “that he 
loves you still.” 

She started, and a flush of color came tremulously over 
the paleness of her cheek. 

“Yes,” repeated Kenyon, “if my interest in Donatello — 
and in yourself, Miriam — endows me with any true insight, 
he not only loves you still, but with a force and depth pro- 
portioned to the stronger grasp of his faculties, in their new 
development.” 

“Do not deceive me,” said Miriam, growing pale again. 

“Not for the world!” replied Kenyon. “Here is what I 
take to be the truth. There was an interval, no doubt, when 
the horror of some calamity, which I need not shape out in 
my conjectures, threw Donatello into a stupor of misery. 
Connected with the first shock there was an intolerable pain 
and shuddering repugnance attaching themselves to all the 
circumstances and surroundings of the event that so terribly 
affected him. Was his dearest friend involved within the 
horror of that moment? He would shrink from her as he 
shrank most of all from himself. But as his mind roused 
itself, — as it rose to a higher life than he had hitherto ex- 
perienced, — whatever had been true and permanent within 
him revived by the self-same impulse. So has it been with 
his love.” 

“But, surely,” said Miriam, “he knows that I am here ! 
Why, then, except that I am odious to him, does he not bid 
me welcome?” 

“He is, I believe, aware of your presence here,” answered 
285 


ROMANCE OF MON^E BENI 


the sculptor. “Your song, a night or two ago, must have 
revealed it to him, and, in truth, I had fancied that there 
was already a consciousness of it in his mind. But, the 
more passionately he longs for your society, the more re- 
ligiously he deems himself bound to avoid it. The idea of a 
life-long penance has taken strong possession of Donatello. 
He gropes blindly about him for some method of sharp self- 
torture, and finds, of course, no other so efficacious as this.” 

“But, he loves me,” repeated Miriam, in a low voice, to 
herself. “Yes; he loves me!” 

It was strange to observe the womanly softness that came 
over her, as she admitted that comfort into her bosom. The 
cold, unnatural indifference of her manner, a kind of frozen 
passionateness which had shocked and chilled the sculptor, 
disappeared. She blushed, and turned away her eyes, know- 
ing that there was more surprise and joy in their dewy 
glances than any man save one ought to detect there. 

“In other respects,” she inquired at length, “is he much 
changed.^” 

“A wonderful process is going forward in Donatello’s 
mind,” answered the sculptor. “The germs of faculties 
that have heretofore slept are fast springing into activity. 
The world of thought is disclosing itself to his inward sight. 
He startles me, at times, with his perception of deep truths ; 
and, quite as often, it must be owned, he compels me to 
smile by the intermixture of his former simplicity with a 
new intelligence. But, he is bewildered with the revela- 
tions that each day brings. Out of his bitter agony, a soul 
and intellect, I could almost say, have been inspired into 
him.” 

“Ah, I could help him here !” cried Miriam, clasping her 
hands. “And how sweet a toil to bend and adapt my whole 
nature to do him good! To instruct, to elevate, to enrich 
his mind with the wealth that would flow in upon me^ had I 

286 


THE MARBLE SALOON 


such a motive for acquiring it! Who else can perform the 
task? Who else has the tender sympathy which he re- 
quires ? Who else, save only me, — a woman, a sharer in the 
same dread secret, a partaker in one identical guilt, — could 
meet him on such terms of intimate equality as the casjs de- 
mands? With this object before me, I might feel a right 
to live! Without it, it is a shame for me to have lived so 
long/" 

“I fully agree with you,” said Kenyon, “that your true 
place is by his side.” 

“Surely it is,” replied Miriam. “If Donatello is entitled 
to aught on earth, it is to my complete self-sacrifice for his 
sake. It does not weaken his claim, methinks, that my only 
prospect of happiness — a fearful word, however — lies in 
the good that may accrue to him from our intercourse. But 
he rejects me! He will not listen to the whisper of his 
heart, telling him that she, most wretched, who beguiled him 
into evil, might guide him to a higher innocence than that 
from which he fell. How is this first, great difficulty to be 
obviated ?” 

“It lies at your own option, Miriam, to do away the 
obstacle at any moment,” remarked the sculptor. “It is but 
to ascend Donatello’s tower, and you will meet him there, 
under the eye of God.” 

“I dare not,” answered Miriam. “No; I dare not!” 

“Do you fear,” asked the sculptor, “the dread eye-witness 
whom I have named?” 

“No; for, as far as I can see into that cloudy and inscru- 
table thing, my heart, it has none but pure motives,” replied 
Miriam. “But, my friend, you little know what a weak or 
what a strong creature a woman is ! I fear not Heaven, in 
this case, at least, but — shall I confess it.^ — I am greatly in 
dread of Donatello. Once he shuddered at my touch. If 
he shudder once again, or frown, I die!” 

287 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


Kenyon could not but marvel at the subjection into which 
this proud and self-dependent woman had wilfully flung 
herself^ hanging her life upon the chance of an angry or ' 
favorable regard from a person who_, a little while before, 
had seemed the plaything of a moment. But, in Miriam’s 
eyes, Donatello was always, thenceforth, invested with the 
tragic dignity of their hour of crime; and, furthermore, the 
keen and deep insight, with which her love endowed her, 
enabled her to know him far better than he could be known 
by ordinary observation. Beyond all question, since she „ 
loved him so, there was a force in Donatello worthy of her j 
respect and love. '[ 

“You see my weakness,” said Miriam, flinging out her 
hands, as a person does when a defect is acknowledged, and | 
beyond remedy. “What I need, now, is an opportunity to' 
show my strength.” 

“It has occurred to me,” Kenyon remarked, “that the time 
is come when it may be desirable to remove Donatello from | 
the complete seclusion in which he buries himself. He has | 
struggled long enough with one idea. He now needs a ' 
variety of thought, which cannot be otherwise so readily | 
supplied to him, as through the medium of a variety of • 
scenes. His mind is awakened, now; his heart, though fullf 
of pain, is no longer benumbed. They should have foodf 
and solace. If he linger here much longer, I fear that he^ 
may sink back into a lethargy. The extreme excitability, I 
which circumstances have imparted to his moral system, has . 
its dangers and its advantages ; it being one of the dangers, 4 j 
that an obdurate scar may supervene upon its very tender- j 
ness. Solitude has done what it could for him; now, for a i 
while, let him be enticed into the outer world.” • 

“What is your plan, then asked Miriam. ; 

“Simply,” replied Kenyon, “to persuade Donatello to be 
my companion in a ramble among these hills and valleys. I 

288 


THE MARBLE SALOON 


The little adventures and vicissitudes of travel will do him 
infinite good. After his recent profound experience, he will 
re-create the world by the new eyes with which he will re- 
gard it. He will escape, I hope, out of a morbid life, and 
find his way into a healthy one.” 

“And what is to be my part in this process?” inquired 
Miriam, sadly, and not without jealousy. “You are taking 
him from me, and putting yourself, and all manner of 
living interests, into the place which I ought to fill!” 

“It would rejoice me, Miriam, to yield the entire respon- 
sibility of this office to yourself,” answered the sculptor. 
“I do not pretend to be the guide and counsellor whom 
Donatello needs; for, to mention no other obstacle, I am a 
man, and between man and man there is always an insuper- 
able gulf. They can never quite grasp each other’s hands; 
and therefore man never derives any intimate help, any 
heart sustenance, from his brother man, but from woman, — 
his mother, his sister, or his wife. Be Donatello’s friend 
at need, therefore, and most gladly will I resign him !” 

“It is not kind to taunt me thus,” said Miriam. “I have 
told you that I cannot do what you suggest, because I dare 
not.” 

“Well, then,” rejoined the sculptor, “see if there is any 
possibility of adapting yourself to my scheme. The inci- 
dents of a journey often fling people together in the oddest 
and therefore the most natural way. Supposing you were 
to find yourself on the same route, a reunion with Donatello 
might ensue, and Providence have a larger hand in it than 
either of us.” 

“It is not a hopeful plan,” said Miriam, shaking her head, 
after a moment’s thought; “yet I will not reject it without a 
trial. Only in case it fail, here is a resolution to which I 
bind myself, come what come may! You know the bronze 
statue of Pope Julius in the great square of Perugia? I 

289 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


remember standing in the shadow of that statue one sunny 
noontime^ and being impressed by its paternal aspect^ and 
fancying that a blessing fell upon me from its outstretched 
hand. Ever since I have had a superstition^ — you will call 
it foolish, but sad and ill-fated persons always dream such 
things, — that, if I waited long enough in that same spot, 
some good event would come to pass. Well, my friend, pre- 
cisely a fortnight after you begin your tour, — unless we 
sooner meet, — bring Donatello, at noon, to the base of the 
statue. You will find me there!” 

Kenyon assented to the proposed arrangement, and, after 
some conversation respecting his contemplated line of travel, 
prepared to take his leave. As he met Miriam’s eyes, in 
bidding farewell, he was surprised at the new, tender glad- 
ness that beamed out of them, and at the appearance of 
health and bloom, which, in this little while, had overspread 
her face. 

“May I tell you, Miriam,” said he, smiling, “that you are 
still as beautiful as ever.^” 

“You have a right to notice it,” she replied, “for, if it be 
so, my faded bloom has been revived by the hopes you give 
me. Do you, then, think me beautiful? I rejoice, most 
truly. Beauty — if I possess it — shall be one of the instru- 
ments by which I will try to educate and elevate him, to 
whose good I solely dedicate myself.” 

The sculptor had nearly reached 'the door, when, hearing 
her call him, he turned back, and beheld Miriam still stand- 
ing where he had left her, in the magnificent hall which 
seemed only a fit setting for her beauty. She beckoned him 
to return. 

“You are a man of refined taste,” said she; “more than 
that, a man of delicate sensibility. Now tell me frankly, 
and on your honor! Have I not shocked you many times 

290 


THE MARBLE SALOON 


during this interview by my betrayal of woman’s cause, my 
lack of feminine modesty, my reckless, passionate, most in- 
decorous avowal, that I live only in the life of one who, 
perhaps, scorns and shudders at me?” 

Thus adjured, however difficult the point to which she 
brought him, the sculptor was not a man to swerve aside 
from the simple truth. 

“Miriam,” replied he, “you exaggerate the impression 
made upon my mind ; but it has been painful, and somewhat 
of the character which you suppose.” 

“I knew it,” said Miriam, mournfully, and with no resent- 
ment. “What remains of my finer nature would have told 
me so, even if it had not been perceptible in all your man- 
ner. Well, my dear friend, when you go back to Rome, tell 
Hilda what her severity has done ! She was all womanhood 
to me ; and when she cast me off*, I had no longer any terms 
to keep with the reserves and decorums of my sex. Hilda 
has set me free ! Pray tell her so, from Miriam, and thank 
her !” 

“I shall tell Hilda nothing that will give her pain,” an- 
swered Kenyon. “But, Miriam, — though I know -not what 
passed between her and yourself, — I feel, and let the 
noble frankness of your disposition forgive me if I say so, 
— I feel that she was right. You have a thousand admir- 
able qualities. MTiatever mass of evil may have fallen into 
your life, — pardon me, but your own words suggest it, 
you are still as capable as ever of many high and heroic 
virtues. But the white shining purity of Hilda s nature is 
a thing apart; and she is bound, by the undefiled material of 
which God moulded her, to keep that severity which I, as 
well as you, have recognized.” 

“Oh, you are right!” said Miriam; “I never questioned it; 
though, as I told you, when she cast me off*, it severed some 

291 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


few remaining bonds between me and decorous womanhood. 
But were there anything to forgive^ I do forgive her. May 
you win her virgin heart; for methinks there can be few men 
in this evil world who are not more unworthy of her than 
yourself.” 


292 


CHAPTER XXXII 


Scenes hy the Way 

When it came to the point of quitting the reposeful life 
of Monte Beni^ the sculptor was not without regrets, and 
would willingly have dreamed a little longer of the sweet 
paradise on earth that Hilda’s presence there might make. 
Nevertheless, amid all its repose, he had begun to be sen- 
sible of a restless melancholy, to which the cultivators of the 
ideal arts are more liable than sturdier men. On his own 
part, therefore, and leaving Donatello out of the case, he 
would have judged it well to go. He made parting visits 
to the legendary dell, and to other delightful spots with 
which he had grown familiar; he climbed the tower again, 
and saw a sunset and a moonrise over the great valley; he 
drank, on the eve of his departure, one flask, and then an- 
other, of the Monte Beni Sunshine, and stored up its flavor 
in his memory, as the standard of what is exquisite in wine. 
These things accomplished, Kenyon was ready for the 
journey. 

Donatello had not very easily been stirred out of the pe- 
culiar sluggishness, which inthralls and bewitches melan- 
choly people. He had offered merely a passive resistance, 
however, not an active one, to his friend’s schemes; and 
when the appointed hour came, he yielded to the impulse 
which Kenyon failed not to apply; and was started upon 
the journey before he had made up his mind to undertake 
it. They wandered forth at large, like two knights-errant 
among the valleys, and the mountains, and the old moun- 

293 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


tain-towns of that picturesque and lovely region. Save to 
keep the appointment with Miriam^ a fortnight thereafter, 
in the great square of Perugia, there was nothing more defi- 
nite in the sculptor’s plan, than that they should let them- 
selves be blown hither and thither like winged seeds, that 
mount upon each wandering breeze. Yet there was an idea 
of fatality implied in the simile of the winged seeds which 
did not altogether suit Kenyon’s fancy; for, if you look 
closely into the matter, it will be seen that whatever appears 
most vagrant, and utterly purposeless, turns out, in the end, 
to have been impelled the most surely on a preordained and 
unswerving track. Chance and change love to deal with 
men’s settled plans, not with their idle vagaries. If we de- 
sire unexpected and unimaginable events, we should contrive 
an iron framework, such as we fancy may compel the future 
to take one inevitable shape; then comes in the unexpected, 
and shatters our design in fragments. 

The travellers set forth on horseback, and purposed to 
perform much of their aimless journeyings under the moon, 
and in the cool of the morning or evening twilight; the mid- 
day sun, while summer had hardly begun to trail its depart- 
ing skirts over Tuscany, being still too fervid to allow of 
noontide exposure. 

For a while, they wandered in that same broad valley 
which Kenyon had viewed with such delight from the Monte 
Beni tower. The sculptor soon began to enjoy the idle ac- 
tivity of their new life, which the lapse of a day or two suf- 
ficed to establish as a kind of system; it is so natural for 
mankind to be nomadic, that a very little taste of that primi- 
tive mode of existence subverts the settled habits of many 
preceding years. Kenyon’s cares, and whatever gloomy 
ideas before possessed him, seemed to be left at Monte Beni, 
and were scarcely remembered by the time that its gray 
tower grew undistinguishable on the brown hill-side. His 

294 


SCENES BY THE WAY 


perceptive faculties, which had found little exercise of late, 
amid so thoughtful a way of life, became keen, and kept his 
eyes busy with a hundred agreeable scenes. 

He delighted in the picturesque bits of rustic character 
and manners, so little of which ever comes upon the surface 
of our life at home. There, for example, were the old 
women, tending pigs or sheep by the wayside. As they fol- 
lowed the vagrant steps of their charge, these venerable 
ladies kept spinning yarn with that elsewhere forgotten con- 
trivance, the distaff ; and so wrinkled and stern-looking 
were they, that you might have taken them for the Parcae, 
spinning the threads of human destiny. In contrast with 
their great-grandmothers, were the children, leading goats 
of shaggy beard, tied by the horns, and letting them browse 
on branch and shrub. It is the fashion of Italy to add the 
petty industry of age and childhood to the hum of human 
toil. To the eyes of an observer from the Western world, 
it was a strange spectacle to see sturdy, sunburnt creatures, 
in petticoats, but otherwise manlike, toiling side by side 
with male laborers, in the rudest work of the fields. These 
sturdy women (if as such we must recognize them) wore 
the high-crowned, broad-brimmed hat of Tuscan straw, the 
customary female head-apparel; and, as every breeze blew 
back its breadth of brim, the sunshine constantly added 
depth to the brown glow of their cheeks. The elder sister- 
hood, however, set off their witch-like ugliness to the worst 
advantage with black felt hats, bequeathed them, one would 
fancy, by their long-buried husbands. 

Another ordinary sight, as sylvan as the above, and more 
agreeable, was a girl, bearing on her back a huge bundle of 
green twigs and shrubs, or grass, intermixed with scarlet 
poppies and blue flowers; the verdant burden being some- 
times of such size as to hide the bearer’s figure, and seem a 
self-moving mass of fragrant bloom and verdure. Oftener, 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


however^ the bundle reached only half-way down the back 
of the rustic Nymph, leaving in sight her well-developed 
lower limbs, and the crooked knife, hanging behind her, with 
which she had been reaping this strange harvest sheaf. A 
pre-Raphaelite artist (he, for instance, who painted so mar- 
vellously a wind-swept heap of autumnal leaves) might find 
an admirable subject in one of these Tuscan girls, stepping 
with a free, erect, and graceful carriage. The miscellaneous 
herbage and tangled twigs and blossoms of her bundle, 
crowning her head (while her ruddy, comely face looks out 
between the hanging side festoons like a larger flower), 
would give the painter boundless scope for the minute de- 
lineation which he loves. 

Though mixed up with what was rude and earth-like, 
there was still a remote, dream-like, Arcadian charm, which 
is scarcely to be found in the daily toil of other lands. 
Among the pleasant features of the wayside were always 
the vines, clambering on fig-trees, or other sturdy trunks; 
they wreathed themselves in huge and rich festoons, from 
one tree to another, suspending clusters of ripening grapes 
in the interval between. Under such careless mode of cul- 
ture, the luxuriant vine is a lovelier spectacle than where it 
produces a more precious liquor, and is therefore more arti- 
ficially restrained and trimmed. Nothing can be more pic- 
turesque than an old grape-vine, with almost a trunk of its 
own, clinging fast around its supporting tree. Nor does 
the picture lack its moral. You might twist it to more than 
one grave purpose, as you. saw how the knotted, serpentine 
growth imprisoned within its strong embrace the friend that 
had supported its tender infancy; and how (as seemingly 
flexible natures are prone to do) it converted the sturdier 
tree entirely to its own selfish ends, extending its innumer- 
able arms on every bough, and permitting hardly a leaf to 
sprout except its own. It occurred to Kenyon, that the ene- 

296 


SCENES BY THE WAY 


mies of the vine, in his native land, might here have seen an 
emblem of the remorseless gripe, which the habit of vinous 
enjoyment lays upon its victim, possessing him wholly, and 
letting him live no life but such as it bestows. 

The scene was not less characteristic when their path led 
the two wanderers through some small, ancient town. 
There, besides the peculiarities of present life, they saw 
tokens of the life that had long ago been lived and flung 
aside. The little town, such as we see in our mind’s eye, 
would have its gate and its surrounding walls, so ancient and 
massive that ages had not sufficed to crumble them away; 
but in the lofty upper portion of the gateway, still standing 
over the empty arch, where there was no longer a gate to 
shut, there would be a dove-cote, and peaceful doves for the 
only warders. Pumpkins lay ripening in the open cham- 
bers of the structure. Then, as for the town-wall, on the 
outside an orchard extends peacefully along its base, full, 
not of apple-trees, but of those old humorists with gnarled 
trunks, and twisted boughs, the olives. Houses have been 
built upon the ramparts, or burrowed out of their ponderous 
foundation. Even the gray, martial towers, crowned with 
ruined turrets, have been converted into rustic habitations, 
from the windows of which hang ears of Indian corn. At a 
door, that has been broken through the massive stone-work, 
where it was meant to be strongest, some contadini are win- 
nowing grain. Small windows, too, are pierced through the 
whole line of ancient wall, so that it seems a row of dwell- 
ings with one continuous front, built in a strange style of 
needless strength; but remnants of the old battlements and 
machicolations are interspersed with the homely chambers 
and earthen-tiled house-tops; and all along its extent both 
grape-vines and running flower-shrubs are encouraged to 
clamber and sport over the roughness of its decay. 

Finally the long grass, intermixed with weeds and wild- 

297 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


flowers^ waves on the uppermost height of the shattered ram- 
part; and it is exceedingly pleasant in the golden sunshine 
of the afternoon to behold the warlike precinct so friendly 
in its old days^ and so overgrown with rural peace. In its 
guard-rooms^ its prison-chambers, and scooped out of its 
ponderous breadth, there are dwellings nowadays where 
happy human lives are spent. Human parents and broods 
of children nestle in them, even as the swallows nestle in 
the little crevices along the broken summit of the wall. 

Passing through the gateway of this same little town, 
challenged only by those watchful sentinels, the pigeons, we 
find ourselves in a long, narrow street, paved from side to 
side with flagstones, in the old Roman fashion. Nothing 
can exceed the grim ugliness of the houses, most of which 
are three or four stories high, stone built, gray, dilapidated, 
or half-covered with plaster in patches, and contiguous all 
along from end to end of the town. Nature, in the shape of 
tree, shrub, or grassy sidewalk, is as much shut out from the 
one street of the rustic village as from the heart of any 
swarming city. The dark and half -ruinous habitations, with 
their small windows, many of which are drearily closed with 
wooden shutters, are but magnified hovels, piled story upon 
story, and squalid with the grime that successive ages have 
left behind them. It would be a hideous scene to contem- 
plate in a rainy day, or when no human life pervaded it. In 
the summer-noon, however, it possesses vivacity enough to 
keep itself cheerful; for all the within-doors of the village 
then bubbles over upon the flagstones, or looks out from the 
small windows, and from here and there a balcony. Some 
of the populace are at the butcher’s shop ; others are at the 
fountain, which gushes into a marble basin that resembles 
an antique sarcophagus. A tailor is sewing before his door 
with a young priest seated sociably beside him ; a burly friar 
goes by with an empty wine-barrel on his head ; children are 

298 


SCENES BY THE WAY 


at play; women, at their own doorsteps, mend clothes, em- 
broider, weav^e hats of Tuscan straw, or twirl the distaff. 
Many idlers, meanwhile, strolling from one group to 
another, let the warm day slide by in the sweet, interminable 
task of doing nothing. 

From all these people there comes a babblement that seems 
quite disproportioned to the number of tongues that make 
it. So many words are not uttered in a New England vil- 
lage throughout the year — except it be at a political canvass 
or town-meeting — as are spoken here, with no especial pur- 
pose, in a single day. Neither so many words, nor so much 
laughter; for people talk about nothing as if they were ter- 
ribly in earnest, and make merry at nothing as if it were 
the best of all possible jokes. In so long a time as they 
have existed, and within such narrow precincts, these little 
walled towns are brought into a closeness of society that 
makes them but a larger household. All the inhabitants arc 
akin to each, and each to all; they assemble in the street as 
their common saloon, and thus live and die in a familiarity 
of intercourse, such as never can be known where a village 
is open at either end, and all roundabout, and has ample 
room within itself. 

Stuck up beside the door of one house, in this village 
street, is a withered bough; and on a stone seat, just under 
the shadow of the bough, sits a party of jolly drinkers, 
making proof of the new wine, or quaffing the old, as their 
often-tried and comfortable friend. Kenyon draws bridle 
here (for the bough, or bush, is a symbol of the wine-shop 
j at this day in Italy, as it was three hundred years ago in 
England), and calls for a goblet of the deep, mild, purple 
j juice, well diluted with water from the fountain. The Sun- 
J shine of Monte Beni would be welcome now. Meanwhile, 
1 Donatello has ridden onward, but alights where a shrine, 
() with a burning lamp before it, is built into the wall of an 

I 299 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


inn-stable. He kneels^ and crosses himself^ and mutters 
a brief prayer,, without attracting notice from the passers- 
by, many of whom are parenthetically devout, in a similar 
fashion. By this time the sculptor. has drunk off his wine- 
and-water, and our two travellers resume their way, emerg- 
ing from the opposite gate of the village. 

Before them, again, lies the broad valley, with a mist 
so thinly scattered over it as to be perceptible only in the 
distance, and most so in the nooks of the hills. Now that 
we have called it mist, it seems a mistake not rather to have 
called it sunshine ; the glory of so much light being mingled 
with so little gloom, in the airy material of that vapor. 
Be it mist or sunshine, it adds a touch of ideal beauty to the 
scene, almost persuading the spectator that this valley and 
those hills are visionary, because their visible atmosphere is 
so like the substance of a dream. 

Immediately about them, however, there were abundant 
tokens that the country was not really the paradise it looked 
to be, at a casual glance. Neither the wretched cottages 
nor the dreary farm-houses seemed to partake of the pros- 
perity, with which so kindly a climate, and so fertile a por- 
tion of Mother Earth’s bosom, should have filled them, one 
and all. But, possibly, the peasant inhabitants do not exist 
in so grimy a poverty, and in homes so comfortless, as a 
stranger, with his native ideas of those matters, would be 
likely to imagine. The Italians appear to possess none 
of that emulative pride which we see in our New England 
villages, where every householder, according to his taste 
and means, endeavors to make his homestead an ornament 
to the grassy and elm-shadowed wayside. In Italy there 
are no neat doorsteps and thresholds; no pleasant, vine- 
sheltered porches; none of those grass-plots or smoothly 
shorn lawns, which hospitably invite the imagination into 
the sweet domestic interiors of English life. Everything, 

300 


SCENES BY THE WAY 


however sunny and luxuriant may be the scene around, is 
especially disheartening in the immediate neighborhood of 
an Italian home. 

An artist, it is true, might often thank his stars for those 
old houses, so picturesquely time-stained, and with the 
plaster falling in blotches from the ancient brick-work. The 
prison-like, iron-barred windows, and the wide-arched, dis- 
mal entrance, admitting on one hand to the stable, on the 
other to the kitchen, might impress him as far better worth 
his pencil than the newly painted pine boxes, in which — 
if he be an American — his countrymen live and thrive. But 
there is reason to suspect that a people are waning to decay 
and ruin the moment that their life becomes fascinating 
either in the poet’s imagination or the painter’s eye. 

As usual, on Italian waysides, the wanderers passed great, 
black crosses, hung with all the instruments of the sacred 
agony and passion: there were the crown of thorns, the 
hammer and nails, the pincers, the spear, the sponge; and 
perched over the whole, the cock that crowed to St. Peter’s 
remorseful conscience. Thus, while the fertile scene showed 
the never-failing beneficence of the Creator towards man in 
his transitory state, these symbols reminded each wayfarer 
of the Saviour’s infinitely greater love for him as an im- 
, mortal spirit. Beholding these consecrated stations, the 
idea seemed to strike Donatello of converting the otherwise 
aimless journey into a penitential pilgrimage. At each 
of them he alighted to kneel and kiss the cross, and humbly 
press his forehead against its foot; and this so invariably, 
i| that the sculptor soon learned to draw bridle of his own 
jj accord. It may be, too, heretic as he was, that Kenyon like- 
wise put up a prayer, rendered more fervent by the symbols 
i| before his eyes, for the peace of his friend’s conscience, 
i| and the pardon of the sin that so oppressed him. 
r Not only at the crosses did Donatello kneel, but at each 

SOI 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


of the many shrineSj where the Blessed Virgin in fresco — 
faded with sunshine and half washed out with showers — 
looked benignly at her worshipper ; or where she was repre- 
sented in a wooden image^ or a bas-relief of plaster or mar- 
ble^ as accorded with the means of the devout person who 
builtj or restored from a mediaeval antiquity,, these places of 
wayside worship. They Avere everywhere: under arched 
niches, or in little penthouses with a brick tiled roof, just 
large enough to shelter them; or perhaps in some bit of old 
Roman masonry, the founders of which had died before the 
Advent; or in the wall of a country inn or farm-house; or at 
the midway point of a bridge; or in the shallow cavity of a 
natural rock; or high upward in the deep cuts of the road. 
It appeared to the sculptor that Donatello prayed the more 
earnestly and the more hopefully at these shrines, because 
the mild face of the Madonna promised him to intercede as 
a tender mother betwixt the poor culprit and the awfulness 
of judgment. 

It was beautiful to observe, indeed, how tender was the 
soul of man and woman towards the Virgin mother, in 
recognition of the tenderness which, as their faith taught 
them, she immortally cherishes towards all human souls. 
In the wire-work screen, before each shrine, hung offerings 
of roses, or whatever flower was sweetest and most seasona- 
ble; some already wilted and withered, some fresh with 
that very morning’s dew-drops. Flowers there were, too, 
that, being artificial, never bloomed on earth, nor would ever 
fade. The thought occurred to Kenyon, that flower-pots 
with living plants might be set within the niches, or even 
that rose-trees, and all kinds of flowering shrubs, might be 
reared under the shrines, and taught to twine and wreathe 
themselves around; so that the Virgin should dwell within 
a bower of verdure, bloom, and fragrant freshness, sym- 
bolizing a homage perpetually new. There are many things 

S02 


SCENES BY THE WAY 


in the religious customs of these people that seem good; 
many things, at least, that might be both good and beauti- 
ful, if the soul of goodness and the sense of beauty were 
as much alive in the Italians now as they must have been 
when those customs were first imagined and adopted. But, 
instead of blossoms on the shrub, or freshly gathered, with 
the dew-drops on their leaves, their worship, nowadays, is 
best symbolized by the artificial flower. 

The sculptor fancied, moreover (but perhaps it was his 
heresy that suggested the idea), that it would be of happy 
influence to place a comfortable and shady seat beneath 
every wayside shrine. Then the weary and sun-scorched 
traveller, while resting himself under her protecting shadow, 
might thank the Virgin for her hospitality. Nor, perchance, 
were he to regale himself, even in such a consecrated spot, 
with the fragrance of a pipe, would it rise to heaven more 
offensively than the smoke of priestly incense. We do 
ourselves wrong, and too meanly estimate the Holiness 
above us, when we deem that any act or enjoyment, good 
in itself, is not good to do religiously. 

Whatever may be the iniquities of the papal system, it 
was a wise and lovely sentiment that set up the frequent 
shrine and cross along the roadside. No wayfarer, bent on 
whatever worldly errand, can fail to be reminded, at every 
mile or two, that this is not the business which most con- 
cerns him. The pleasure-seeker is silently admonished to 
look heavenward for a joy infinitely greater than he now 
possesses. The wretch in temptation beholds the eross, and 
is warned that, if he yield, the Saviour’s agony for his 
sake will have been endured in vain. The stubborn crimi- 
nal, whose heart has long been like a stone, feels it throb 
anew with dread and hope; and our poor Donatello, as he 
went kneeling from shrine to cross, and from cross to 

803 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


shrine^ doubtless found an efficacy in these symbols that 
helped him towards a higher penitence. 

Whether the young Coimt of Monte Beni noticed the fact, 
or no, there was more than one incident of their journey 
that led Kenyon to believe that they were attended, or 
closely followed, or preceded, near at hand, by some one 
who took an interest in their motions. As it were, the step, 
the sweeping garment, the faintly heard breath, of an in- 
visible companion, was beside them, as they went on their 
way. It was like a dream that had strayed out of their 
slumber, and was haunting them in the daytime, when its 
shadowy substance could have neither density nor outline, 
in the too obtrusive light. After sunset, it grew a little 
more distinct. 

“On the left of that last shrine,” asked the sculptor, as 
they rode, under the moon, “did you observe the figure of a 
woman kneeling, with her face hidden in her hands?” 

“I never looked that way,” replied Donatello. “I was 
saying my own prayer. It was some penitent, perchance. 
May the Blessed Virgin be the more gracious to the poor 
soul, because she is a woman.” 


804 


CHAPTER XXXIII 

Pictured Windows 

After wide wanderings through the valley, the two 
travellers directed their course towards its boundary of 
hills. Here, the natural scenery and men’s modifications of 
it immediately took a different aspect from that of the fer- 
tile and smiling plain. Not unfrequently there was a 
convent on the hill-side; or, on some insulated promon- 
tory, a ruined castle, once the den of a robber chieftain, 
who was accustomed to dash down from his commanding 
height upon the road that wound below. For ages back, 
the old fortress had been flinging down its crumbling ram- 
parts, stone by stone, towards the grimy village at its 
foot. 

Their road wound onward among the hills, which rose 
steep and lofty from the scanty level space that lay between 
them. They continually thrust their great bulks before 
the wayfarers, as if grimly resolute to forbid their pas- 
sage, or closed abruptly behind them, when they still dared 
to proceed. A gigantic hill would set its foot right down 
before them, and only at the last moment would grudgingly 
withdraw it, just far enough to let them creep towards an- 
other obstacle. Adown these rough heights were visible the 
dry tracks of many a mountain-torrent that had lived a life 
too fierce and passionate to be a long one. Or, perhaps, a 
stream was yet hurrying shyly along the edge of a far 
wider bed of pebbles and shelving rock than it seemed to 
need, though not too wide for the swollen rage of which this 

305 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


shy rivulet was capable. A stone bridge bestrode it^ the 
ponderous arches of which were upheld and rendered in- 
destructible by the weight of the very stones that threat- 
ened to crush them down. Old Roman toil was perceptible 
in the foundations of that massive bridge; the first weight 
that it ever bore was that of an army of the Republic. 

Threading these defiles, they would arrive at. some im- 
memorial city, crowning the high summit of a hill with its 
cathedral, its many churches, and public edifices, all of 
Gothic architecture. With no more level ground than a 
single piazza, in the midst, the ancient town tumbled its 
crooked and narrow streets down the mountain-side, 
through arched passages, and by steps of stone. The as- 
pect of everything was awfully old; older, indeed, in its 
effect on the imagination, than Rome itself, because history 
does not lay its finger on these forgotten edifices and tell us 
all about their origin. Etruscan princes may have dwelt in 
them. A thousand years, at all events, would seem but a 
middle age for these structures. They are built of such 
huge, square stones, that their appearance of ponderous 
durability distresses the beholder with the idea that they 
can never fall, — never crumble away, — never be less fit 
than now for human habitation. Many of them may once 
have been palaces, and still retain a squalid grandeur. But, 
gazing at them, we recognize how undesirable it is to build 
the tabernacle of our brief life-time out of permanent ma- 
terials, and with a view to their being occupied by future 
generations. 

All towns should be made capable of purification by fire, 
or of decay, within each half-century. Otherwise, they be- 
come the hereditary haunts of vermin and noisomeness, 
besides standing apart from the possibility of such im- 
provements as are constantly introduced into the rest of 
man’s contrivances and accommodations. It is beautiful, no 

S06 


PICTURED WINDOWS 


doubt, and exceedingly satisfactory to some of our natural 
instincts, to imagine our far posterity dwelling under the 
same roof-tree as ourselves. Still, when people insist on 
building indestructible houses, they incur, or their children 
do, a misfortune analogous to that of the Sibyl, when she 
obtained the grievous boon of immortality. So, we may 
build almost immortal habitations, it is true; but we cannot 
keep them from growing old, musty, unwholesome, dreary, 
full of death-scents, ghosts, and murder-stains; in short, 
such habitations as one sees everywhere in Italy, be they 
hovels or palaces. 

“You should go with me to my native country,” observed 
the sculptor to Donatello. “In that fortunate land, each 
generation has only its own sins and sorrows to bear. Here, 
it seems as if all the weary and dreary Past were piled upon 
the back of the Present. If I were to lose my spirits in this 
country, — if I were to suffer any heavy misfortune here, — 
methinks it would be impossible to stand up against it, 
under such adverse influences.” 

“The sky itself is an old roof, now,” answered the Count; 
“and, no doubt, the sins of mankind have made it gloomier 
than it used to be.” 

“Oh, my poor Faun,” thought Kenyon to himself, “how 
art thou changed !” 

A city, like this of which we speak, seems a sort of stony 
growth out of the hill-side, or a fossilized town; so ancient 
and strange it looks, without enough of life and juiciness 
in it to be any longer susceptible of decay. An earthquake 
would afford it the only chance of being ruined, beyond 
its present ruin. 

Yet, though dead to all the purposes for which we live to- 
day, the place has its glorious recollections, and not merely 
rude and warlike ones, but those of brighter and milder 
triumphs, the fruits of which we still enjoy. Italy can 

307 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


count several of these lifeless towns which, four or five hun- 
dred years ago, were each the birthplace of its own school 
of art; nor have they yet forgotten to be proud of the dark, 
old pictures, and the faded frescos^ the pristine beauty of 
which was a light and gladness to the world. But now, un- 
less one happens to be a painter, these famous works make 
us miserably desperate. They are poor, dim ghosts of 
what, when Giotto or Cimabue first created them, threw a 
splendor along the stately aisles; so far gone towards noth- 
ingness, in our day, that scarcely a hint of design or ex- 
pression can glimmer through the dusk. Those early artists 
did well to paint their frescos. Glowing on the church- 
walls, they might be looked upon as symbols of the living 
spirit that made Catholicism a true religion, and that glori- 
fied it as long as it retained a genuine life; they filled the 
transepts with a radiant throng of saints and angels, and 
threw around the high altar a faint reflection — as much 
as mortals could see, or bear — of a Diviner Presence. 
But now that the colors are so wretchedly bedimmed, — now 
that blotches of plastered wall dot the frescos all over, like 
a mean reality thrusting itself through life’s brightest illu- 
sions, — the next best artist to Cimabue or Giotto or Ghir- 
landaio or Pinturicchio will be he that shall reverently cover 
their ruined masterpieces with whitewash! 

Kenyon, however, being an earnest student and critic 
of art, lingered long before these pathetic relics; and 
Donatello, in his present phase of penitence, thought no 
time spent amiss while he could be kneeling before an altar. 
Whenever they found a cathedral, therefore, or a Gothic 
church, the two travellers were of one mind to enter it. In 
some of these holy edifices they saw pictures that time had 
not dimmed nor injured in the least, though they perhaps 
belonged to as old a school of art as any that were perish- 
ing around them. These were the painted windows; and as 

308 


PICTURED WINDOWS 


often as he gazed at them the sculptor blessed the mediaeval 
time, and its gorgeous contrivances of splendor; for surely 
the skill of man has never accomplished, nor his mind 
imagined, any other beauty or glory worthy to be compared 
with these. 

It is the special excellence of pictured glass, that the 
light, which falls merely on the outside of other pictures, is 
here interfused throughout the work; it illuminates the de- 
sign, and invests it with a living radiance; and in requital 
the unfading colors transmute the common daylight into 
a miracle of richness and glory in its passage through the 
heavenly substance of the blessed and angelic shapes which 
throng the high-arched window. 

“It is a woful thing,” cried Kenyon, while one of these 
frail yet enduring and fadeless pictures threw its hues on 
his face, and on the pavement of the church around him, — 
“a sad necessity that any Christian soul should pass from 
earth without once seeing an antique painted window, with 
the bright Italian sunshine glowing through it! There is 
no other such true symbol of the glories of the better world, 
where a celestial radiance will be inherent in all things and 
persons, and render each continually transparent to the 
sight of all.” 

“But what a horror it would be,” said Donatello, sadly, 
“if there were a soul among them through which the light 
could not be transfused!” 

“Yes; and perhaps this is to be the punishment of sin,” 
replied the sculptor; “not that it shall be made evident to 
the universe, which can profit nothing by such knowledge, 
but that it shall insulate the sinner from all sweet society 
by rendering him impermeable to light, and, therefore, un- 
recognizable in the abode of heavenly simplicity and truth. 
Then, what remains for him, but the dreariness of infinite 
and eternal solitude.^” 


309 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

“That would be a horrible destiny^ indeed!” said Dona- 
tello. 

His voice as he spoke the words had a hollow and dreary 
cadence, as if he anticipated some such frozen solitude for 
himself. A figure in a dark robe was lurking in the obscur- 
ity of a side-chapel close by, and made an impulsive 
movement forward, but hesitated as Donatello spoke again. 

“But there might be a more miserable torture than to be 
solitary forever,” said he. “Think of having a single com- 
panion in eternity, and instead of finding any consolation, 
or at all events variety of torture, to see your own weary, 
weary sin repeated in that inseparable soul.” 

“I think, my dear Count, you have never read Dante,” 
observed Kenyon. “That idea is somewhat in his style, but 
I cannot help regretting that it came into your mind just 
then.” 

The dark-robed figure had shrunk back, and was quite 
lost to sight among the shadows of the chapel. 

“There was an English poet,” resumed Kenyon, turning 
again towards the window, “who speaks of the ‘dim, re- 
ligious light,’ transmitted through painted glass. I always 
admired this richly descriptive phrase; but, though he was 
once in Italy, I question whether Milton ever saw any but 
the dingy pictures in the dusty windows of English cathe- 
drals, imperfectly shown by the gray English daylight. 
He would else have illuminated that word ‘dim’ with some 
epithet that should not chase away the dimness, yet should 
make it glow like a million of rubies, sapphires, emeralds, 
and topazes. Is it not so with yonder window? The pic- 
tures are most brilliant in themselves, yet dim with tender- 
ness and reverence, because God himself is shining through 
them.” 

“The pictures fill me with emotion, but not such as you 
seem to experience,” said Donatello. “I tremble at those 

SIO 


PICTURED WINDOWS 


awful saints; and, most of all, at the figure above them. 
He glows with Divine wrath!” 

“My dear friend,” said Kenyon, “how strangely your 
eyes have transmuted the expression of the figure! It is 
divine love, not wrath!” 

“To my eyes,” said Donatello, stubbornly, “it is wrath, 
not love! Each must interpret for himself.” 

The friends left the church, and looking up, from the 
exterior, at the window which they had just been contem- 
plating within, nothing was visible but the merest outline of 
dusky shapes. Neither the individual likeness of saint, 
angel, nor Saviour, and far less the combined scheme and 
purport of the picture, could anywise be made o^’' That 
miracle of radiant art, thus viewed, was nothin?^ ,/etter than 
an incomprehensible obscurity, ^vithout a gleam of beauty 
to induce the beholder to attempt unravelling it. 

“All this,” thought the sculptor, “is a most forcible 
emblem of the difi*erent aspect of religious truth and sacred 
story, as viewed from the warm interior of belief, or from 
its cold and dreary outside. Christian faith is a grand 
cathedral, with divinely pictured windows. Standing with- 
out, you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any; stand- 
ing within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of un- 
speakable splendors.” 

After Kenyon and Donatello emerged from the church, 
however, they had better opportunity for acts of charity 
and mercy than for religious contemplation; being im- 
mediately surrounded by a swarm of beggars, who are the 
present possessors of Italy, and share the spoil of the 
stranger with the fleas and mosquitoes, their formidable 
allies. These pests — the human ones — had hunted the 
two travellers at every stage of their journey. From vil- 
lage to village, ragged boys and girls kept almost under 
the horses’ feet; hoary grandsires and grandames caught 

311 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


glimpses of their approach^ and hobbled to intercept them 
at some point of vantage; blind men stared them out of 
countenance with their sightless orbs; women held up their 
unwashed babies ; cripples displayed their wooden legs^ their 
grievous scars^ their dangling, boneless arms, their broken 
backs, their burden of a hump, or whatever infirmity or de- 
formity Providence had assigned them for an inheritance. 
On the highest mountain summit — in the most shadowy 
ravine — ^ there was a beggar waiting for them. In one 
small village, Kenyon had the curiosity to count merely how 
many children were crying, whining, and bellowing all at 
once for alms. They proved to be more than forty of as 
ragged and dirty little imps as any in the world; besides 
whom, all the wrinkled matrons, and most of the village 
maids, and not a few stalwart men, held out their hands 
grimly, piteously, or smilingly in the folorn hope of what- 
ever trifle of coin might remain in pockets already so fear- 
fully taxed. Had they been permitted, they would gladly 
have knelt down and worshipped the travellers, and have 
cursed them without rising from their knees, if the ex- 
pected boon failed to be awarded. 

Yet they were not so miserably poor but that the grown 
people kept houses over their heads. In the way of food, 
they had, at least, vegetables in their little gardens, pigs 
and chickens to kill, eggs to fry into omelets with oil, wine 
to drink, and many other things to make life comfortable. 
As for the children, when no more small coin appeared to 
be forthcoming, they began to laugh and play, and turn 
heels over head, showing themselves jolly and vivacious 
brats, and evidently as well fed as needs be. The truth is, 
the Italian peasantry look upon strangers as the almoners 
of Providence, and therefore feel no more shame in asking 
and receiving alms, than in availing themselves of provi- 
dential bounties in whatever other form. 


312 


PICTURED WINDOWS 


In accordance with his nature^ Donatello was always ex- 
ceedingly charitable to these ragged battalions, and ap- 
peared to derive a certain consolation from the prayers 
which many of them put up in his behalf. In Italy a cop- 
per coin of minute value, will often make all the difference 
between a vindictive curse — death by apoplexy being the 
favorite one — mumbled in an old witch’s toothless jaws 
and a prayer from the same lips, so earnest that it would 
seem to reward the charitable soul with at least a puff of 
grateful breath to help him heavenward. Good wishes being 
so cheap, though possibly not very efficacious, and anathe- 
mas so exceedingly bitter, — even if the greater portion of 
their poison remain in the mouth that utters them, — it may 
be wise to expend some reasonable amount in the purchase 
of the former. Donatello invariably did so; and as he dis- 
tributed his alms under the pictured window, of which we 
have been speaking, no less than seven ancient women 
lifted their hands and besought blessings on his head. 

“Come,” said the sculptor, rejoicing at the happier ex- 
pression which he saw in his friend’s face. “I think your 
steed will not stumble with you to-day. Each of these old 
dames looks as much like Horace’s Atra Cura as can well 
be conceived ; but, though there are seven of them, they will 
make your burden on horseback lighter instead of heavier.” 

“Are we to ride far?” asked the Count. 

“A tolerable journey betwixt now and to-morrow noon,” 
Kenyon replied, “for, at that hour, I purpose to be stand- 
ing by the Pope’s statue in the great square of Perugia.” 


313 


CHAPTER XXXIV 
Market-day in Perugia 

Perugia, on its lofty hill-top, was reached by the two 
travellers before the sun had quite kissed away the early 
freshness of the morning. Since midnight, there had been 
a heavy rain, bringing infinite refreshment to the scene of 
verdure and fertility amid which this ancient civilization 
stands; insomuch that Kenyon loitered, when they came to 
the gray city-wall, and was loath to give up the prospect 
of the sunny wilderness that lay below. It was as green as 
England, and bright as Italy alone. There was all the 
wide valley, sweeping down and spreading away on all 
sides from the weed-grown ramparts, and bounded afar by 
mountains, which lay asleep in the sun, with thin mists and 
silvery clouds floating about their heads by way of morning 
dreams. 

“It lacks still two hours of noon,” said the sculptor to 
his friend, as they stood under the arch of the gateway, 
waiting for their passports to be examined; “will you come 
with me to see some admirable frescos by Perugino? There 
is a hall in the Exchange, of no great magnitude, but cov- 
ered with what must have been — at the time it was painted 
■ — such magnificence and beauty as the world had not else- 
where to show.” 

“It depresses me to look at old frescos,” responded the 
Count; “it is a pain, yet not enough of a pain to answer as 
a penance.” 

“Will you look at some pictures by Fra Angelico in the 
SU 


MARKET-DAY IN PERUGIA 


Church of San Domenico?” asked Kenyon; “they are full 
of religious sincerity. When one studies them faithfully, 
it is like holding a conversation about heavenly things with 
a tender and devout-minded man.” 

“You have shown me some of Fra Angelico’s pictures, 
I remember,” answered Donatello; “his angels look as if 
they had never taken a flight out of heaven; and his saints 
seem to have been born saints, and always to have lived so. 
Young maidens, and all innocent persons, I doubt not, may 
find great delight and profit in looking at such holy pic- 
tures. But they are not for me.” 

“Your criticism, I fancy, has great moral depth,” replied 
Kenyon; “and I see in it the reason why Hilda so highly 
appreciates Fra Angelico’s pictures. Well; we will let all 
such matters pass for to-day, and stroll about this fine old 
city till noon.” 

They wandered to and fro, accordingly, and lost them- 
selves among the strange, precipitate passages, which, in 
Perugia, are called streets. Some of them are like caverns, 
being arched all over, and plunging down abruptly towards 
an unknown darkness; which, when you have fathomed its 
depths, admits you to a daylight that you scarcely hoped to 
behold again. Here they met shabby men, and the care- 
worn wives and mothers of the people, some of whom 
guided children in leading-strings through those dim and 
antique thoroughfares, where a hundred generations had 
passed before the little feet of to-day began to tread them. 
Thence they climbed upward again, and came to the level 
plateau, on the summit of the hill, where are situated the 
grand piazza and the principal public edifices. 

It happened to be market-day in Perugia. The great 
square, therefore, presented a far more vivacious spectacle 
than would have been witnessed in it at any other time of 
the week, though not so lively as to overcome the gray 

315 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


solemnity of the architectural portion of the scene. In the ; 
shadow of the cathedral and other old Gothic structures — | 
seeking shelter from the sunshine that fell across the rest j 
of the piazza — was a crowd of people, engaged as buyers | 
or sellers in the petty traffic of a country-fair. Dealers , 
had erected booths and stalls on the pavement, and over- 
spread them with scanty awnings, beneath which they | 
stood, vociferously crying their merchandise; such as shoes, ; 
hats and caps, yarn stockings, cheap jewelry and cutlery, i 
books, chiefly little volumes of a religious character, and a | 
few French novels; toys, tin- ware, old iron, cloth, rosaries | 
of beads, crucifixes, cakes, biscuits, sugar-plums, and in- | 
numerable little odds and ends, which we see no object in 
advertising. Baskets of grapes, figs, and pears stood on 
the ground. Donkeys, bearing panniers stuff’ed out with 
kitchen vegetables, and requiring an ample roadway, 
roughly shouldered aside the throng. 

Crowded as the square was, a juggler found room to 
spread out a white cloth upon the pavement, and cover it 
with cups, plates, balls, cards, — the whole material of his 
magic, in short, — wherewith he proceeded to work miracles 
under the noonday sun. An organ-grinder at one point, 
and a clarion and a flute at another, accomplished what 
they could towards filling the wide space with tuneful noise. 
Their small uproar, however, was nearly drowned by the 
multitudinous voices of the people, bargaining, quarrelling, 
laughing, and babbling copiously at random; for the brisk- 
ness of the mountain atmosphere, or some other cause, made 
everybody so loquacious, that more words were wasted in 
Perugia on this one market-day, than the noisiest piazza of 
Rome would utter in a month. 

Through all this petty tumult, which kept beguiling 
one’s eyes and upper strata of thought, it was delightful 
to catch glimpses of the grand old architecture that stood 

316 


MARKET-DAY IN PERUGIA 


around the square. The life of the flitting moment, exist- 
ing in the antique shell of an age gone by, has a fascina- 
tion which we do not find in either the past or present, 
taken by themselves. It might seem irreverent to make the 
gray cathedral and the tall, time-worn palaces echo back 
the exuberant vociferation of the market; but they did so, 
and caused the sound to assume a kind of poetic rhythm, 
and themselves looked only the more majestic for their con- 
descension. 

On one side, there was an immense edifice devoted to pub- 
lic purposes, with an antique gallery, and a range of arched 
and stone-mullioned windows, running along its front; and 
by way of entrance it had a central Gothic arch, elaborately 
wreathed around with sculptured semicircles, within which 
the spectator was aware of a stately and impressive gloom. 
Though merely the municipal council-house and exchange 
of a decayed country town, this structure was worthy to 
have held in one portion of it the parliament-hall of a na- 
tion, and in the other, the state apartments of its ruler. On 
another side of the square rose the mediaeval front of the 
cathedral, where the imagination of a Gothic architect had 
long ago flowered out indestructibly, in the first place, a 
grand design, and then covering it with such abundant de- 
tail of ornament, that the magnitude of the work seemed 
less a miracle than its minuteness. You would suppose 
that he must have softened the stone into wax, until his 
most delicate fancies were modelled in the pliant material, 
and then had hardened it into stone again. The whole 
; was a vast, black-lettered page of the richest and quaintest 
I poetry. In fit keeping with all this old magnificence was a 
I great marble fountain, where again the Gothic imagination 
f showed its overflow and gratuity of device in the manifold 
1 sculptures which it lavished as freely as the water did its 
J shifting shapes. 


317 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


Besides the two venerable structures which we have de- 
scribed^ there were lofty palaces_, perhaps of as old a date, 
rising story above story, and adorned with balconies, 
whence, hundreds of years ago, the princely occupants had 
been accustomed to gaze down at the sports, business, and 
popular assemblages of the piazza. And, beyond all ques- 
tion, they thus witnessed the erection of a bronze statue, 
which, three centuries since, was placed on the pedestal 
that it still occupies. 

“I never come to Perugia,” said Kenyon, “without 
spending as much time as I can spare in studying yonder 
statue of Pope Julius the Third. Those sculptors of the 
Middle Age have fitter lessons for the professors of my art 
than we can find in the Grecian masterpieces. They belong 
to our Christian civilization; and, being earnest works, they 
always express something which we do not get from the an- 
tique. Will you look at it?” 

“Willingly,” replied the Count, “for I see, even so far 
off, that the statue is bestowing a benediction, and there 
is a feeling in my heart that I may be permitted to share it.” 

Remembering the similar idea which Miriam a short time 
before had expressed, the sculptor smiled hopefully at the 
coincidence. They made their way through the throng of 
the market-place, and approached close to the iron railing 
that protected the pedestal of the statue. 

It was a figure of a pope, arrayed in his pontifical robes, 
and crowned with the tiara. He sat in a bronze chair, 
elevated high above the pavement, and seemed to take 
kindly yet authoritative cognizance of the busy scene which 
was at that moment passing before his eye. His right hand 
was raised and spread abroad, as if in the act of shedding 
forth a benediction, which every man — so broad, so wise, 
and so serenely affectionate was the bronze pope’s regard 
— might hope to feel quietly descending upon the need, or 

318 


MARKET-DAY IN PERUGIA 


the distress, that he had closest at his heart. The statue had 
life and observation in it, as well as patriarchal majesty. 
An imaginative spectator could not but be impressed with 
the idea that this benignly awful representative of divine 
and human authority might rise from his brazen chair, 
should any great public exigency demand his interposition, 
and encourage or restrain the people by his gesture, or even 
by prophetic utterances worthy of so grand a presence. 

And, in the long, calm intervals, amid the quiet lapse of 
ages, the pontiff watched the daily turmoil around his seat, 
listening with majestic patience to the market cries, and all 
the petty uproar that awoke the echoes of the stately old 
piazza. He was the enduring friend of these men, and of 
their forefathers and children, — the familiar face of gen- 
erations. 

“The pope’s blessing, methinks, has fallen upon you,” 
observed the sculptor, looking at his friend. 

In truth, Donatello’s countenance indicated a healthier 
spirit than while he was brooding in his melancholy tower. 
The change of scene, the breaking up of custom, the fresh 
flow of incidents, the sense of being homeless, and therefore 
free, had done something for our poor Faun; these circum- 
stances had at least promoted a reaction, which might else 
have been slower in its progress. Then, no doubt, the 
bright day, the gay spectacle of the market-place, and the 
sympathetic exhilaration of so many people’s cheerfulness, 
had each their suitable effect on a temper naturally prone 
to be glad. Perhaps, too, he was magnetically conscious of 
a presence that formerly sufficed to make him happy. Be 
the cause what it might, Donatello’s eyes shone with a se- 
rene and hopeful expression while looking upward at the 
bronze pope, to whose widely diffused blessing, it may be, 
he attributed all this good influence. 

319 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


"‘Yes^ my dear friend/’ said he, in reply to the sculptor’s 
remark, “I feel the blessing upon my spirit.” 

“It is wonderful,” said Kenyon, with a smile, “wonder- 
ful and delightful to think how long a good man’s benefi- 
cence may be potent, even after his death. How great, 
then, must have been the efficacy of this excellent pontiff’s 
blessing while he was alive !” 

“I have heard,” remarked the Count, “that there was a 
brazen image set up in the wilderness, the sight of which 
healed the Israelites of their poisonous and rankling 
wounds. If it be the Blessed Virgin’s pleasure, why should 
not this holy image before us do me equal good? A wound 
has long been rankling in my soul, and filling it with 
poison.” 

“I did wrong to smile,” answered Kenyon. “It is not 
for me to limit Providence in its operations on man’s spirit.” 

While they stood talking, the clock in the neighboring 
cathedral told the hour, with twelve reverberating strokes, 
which it flung down upon the crowded market-place, as if 
warning one and all to take advantage of the bronze pon- 
tiff’s benediction, or of Heaven’s blessing, however prof- 
fered, before the opportunity were lost. 

“High noon,” said the sculptor. “It is Miriam’s hour!” 


S20 


CHAPTER XXXV 


The Bronze Pontiff's Benediction 

When the last of the twelve strokes had fallen from the 
cathedral clock, Kenyon threw his eyes over the busy scene 
of the market-place, expecting to discern Miriam some- 
where in the crowd. He looked next towards the cathedral 
itself, where it was reasonable to imagine that she might 
have taken shelter, while awaiting her appointed time. 
Seeing no trace of her in either direction, his eyes came 
back from their quest somewhat disappointed, and rested 
on a figure which was leaning, like Donatello and himself, 
on the iron balustrade that surrounded the statue. Only a 
moment before, they two had been alone. 

It was the figure of a woman, with her head bowed on 
her hands, as if she deeply felt — what we have been en- 
deavoring to convey into our feeble description — the be- 
nign and awe-inspiring influence which the pontiif’s statue 
exercises upon a sensitive spectator. No matter though it 
were modelled for a Catholic chief priest, the desolate heart, 
whatever be its religion, recognizes in that image the like- 
ness of a father. 

“Miriam,” said the sculptor, with a tremor in his voice, 
“is it yourself.^” 

“It is I,” she replied; “I am faithful to my engagement, 
though with many fears.” 

She lifted her head, and revealed to Kenyon — revealed 
to Donatello likewise — the well-remembered features of 
Miriam. They were pale and worn, but distinguished even 

32 1 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


now, though less gorgeously, by a beauty that might be 
imagined bright enough to glimmer with its own light in a 
dim cathedral aisle, and had no need to shrink from the 
severer test of the mid-day sun. But she seemed tremulous, 
and hardly able to go through with a scene which at a dis- 
tance she had found courage to undertake. 

“You are most welcome, Miriam!” said the sculptor, 
seeking to afford her the encouragement which he saw she 
so greatly required. “I have a hopeful trust that the result 
of this interview will be propitious. Come; let me lead 
you to Donatello.” 

“No, Kenyon, no!” whispered Miriam, shrinking back; 
“imless of his own accord he speaks my name, — unless he 
bids me stay, — no word shall ever pass between him and 
me. It is not that I take upon me to be proud at this late 
hour. Among other feminine qualities, I threw away my 
pride when Hilda cast me off.” 

“If not pride, what else restrains you?” Kenyon asked, 
a little angry at her unseasonable scruples, and also at this 
half-complaining reference to Hilda’s just severity. 
“After daring so much, it is no time for fear! If we let 
him part from you without a word, your opportunity of 
doing him inestimable good is lost forever.” 

“True; it will be lost forever!” repeated Miriam, sadly. 
“But, dear friend, will it be my fault? I willingly fling my 
woman’s pride at his feet. But — do you not see? — his 
heart must be left freely to its own decision whether to 
recognize me, because on his voluntary choice depends the 
whole question whether my devotion will do him good or 
harm. Except he feel an infinite need of me, I am a 
burden and fatal obstruction to him!” 

“Take your own course, then, Miriam,” said Kenyon; 
“and, doubtless, the crisis being what it is, your spirit is 
better instructed for its emergencies than mine.” 

322 


THE BRONZE PONTIFF’S BENEDICTION 


While the foregoing words passed between them they 
had withdrawn a little from the immediate vicinity of the 
statue, so as to be out of Donatello’s hearing. Still, how- 
ever, they were beneath the pontiff’s outstretched hand; 
and Miriam, with her beauty and her sorrow, looked up 
into his benignant face, as if she had come thither for his 
pardon and paternal affection, and despaired of so vast a 
boon. 

Meanwhile, she had not stood thus long in the public 
square of Perugia, without attracting the observation of 
many eyes. With their quick sense of beauty, these 
Italians had recognized her loveliness, and spared not to 
take their fill of gazing at it; though their native gentle- 
ness and courtesy made their homage far less obtrusive 
than that of Germans, French, or Anglo-Saxons might have 
been. It is not improbable that Miriam had planned this 
momentous interview, on so public a spot and at high 
noon, with an eye to the sort of protection that would be 
thrown over it by a multitude of eye-witnesses. In circum- 
stances of profound feeling and passion, there is often a 
sense that too great a seclusion cannot be endured; there 
is an indefinite dread of being quite alone with the object 
of our deepest interest. The species of solitude that a 
crowd harbors within itself is felt to be preferable, in 
certain conditions of the heart, to the remoteness of a 
desert or the depths of an untrodden wood. Hatred, love, 
or whatever kind of too intense emotion, or even indiffer- 
ence, where emotion has once been, instinctively seeks to 
interpose some barrier between itself and the correspond- 
ing passion in another breast. This, we suspect, was what 
Miriam had thought of, in coming to the thronged piazza; 
partly this, and partly, as she said, her superstition that 
the benign statue held good influences in store. 

But Donatello remained leaning against the balustrade. 

323 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


She dared not glance towards him^ to see whether he were 
pale and agitated, or calm as ice. Only, she knew that 
the moments were fleetly lapsing away, and that his heart 
must call her soon, or the voice would never reach her. She 
turned quite away from him and spoke again to the 
sculptor. 

“I have wished to meet you,” said she, “for more than 
one reason. News has come to me respecting a dear friend 
of ours. Nay, not of mine! I dare not call her a friend 
of mine, though once the dearest.” 

“Do you speak of Hilda?” exclamed Kenyon, with 
quick alarm. “Has anything befallen her? When I last 
heard of her, she was still in Rome, and well.” 

“Hilda remains in Rome,” replied Miriam, “nor is she 
ill as regards physical health, though much depressed in 
spirits. She lives quite alone in her dove-cote; not a friend 
near her, not one in Rome, which, you know, is deserted 
by all but its native inhabitants. I fear for her health, 
if she continue long in such solitude, with despondency 
preying on her mind. I tell you this, knowing the interest 
which the rare beauty of her character has awakened in 
you.” 

“I will go to Rome!” said the sculptor, in great emotion. 
“Hilda has never allowed me to manifest more than a 
friendly regard; but, at least, she cannot prevent my watch- 
ing over her at a humble distance. I will set out this very 
hour.” 

“Do not leave us now !” whispered Miriam, implor- 
ingly, and laying her hand on his arm. “One moment 
more! Ah; he has no word for me!” 

“Miriam!” said Donatello. 

Though but a single word, and the first that he had 
spoken, its tone was a warrant of the sad and tender depth 
from which it came. It told Miriam things of infinite im- 

324 


THE BRONZE PONTIFF’S BENEDICTION 


portance, and^ first of all^ that he still loved her. The 
sense of their mutual crime had stunned, but not destroyed, 
the vitality of his affection; it was therefore indestructible. 
That tone, too, bespoke an altered and deepened character; 
it told of a vivified intellect, and of spiritual instruction 
that had come through sorrow and remorse; so that instead 
of the wild boy, the thing of sportive, animal nature, the 
sylvan Faun, here was now the man of feeling and intel- 
ligence. 

She turned towards him, while his voice still reverberated 
in the depths of her soul. 

“You have called me!” said she. 

“Because my deepest heart has need of you!” he re- 
plied. “Forgive, Miriam, the coldness, the hardness with 
which I parted from you! I was bewildered with strange 
horror and gloom.” 

“Alas ! and it was I that brought it on you,” said she. 
“What repentance, what self-sacrifice, can atone for that 
infinite wrong There was something so sacred in the 
innocent and joyous life which you were leading! A hap- 
py person is such an imaccustomed and holy creature in 
this sad world! And, encountering so rare a being, and 
gifted with the power of sympathy with his sunny life, it 
was my doom, mine, to bring him within the limits of sin- 
ful, sorrowful mortality! Bid me depart, Donatello! Fling 
me off! No good, through my agency, can follow upon 
such a mighty evil!” 

“Miriam,” said he, “our lot lies together. Is it not so? 
Tell me, in Heaven’s name, if it be otherwise.” 

Donatello’s conscience was evidently perplexed with 
doubt, whether the communion of a crime, such as they two 
were jointly stained with, ought not to stifle all the instinc- 
tive motions of their hearts, impelling them one towards 
the other. Miriam, on the other hand, remorsefully ques- 

325 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


tioned with herself whether the misery_, already accruing 
from her influence, should not warn her to withdraw from 
his path. In this momentous interview, therefore, two souls 
were groping for each other in the darkness of guilt and 
sorrow, and hardly were bold enough to grasp the cold 
hands that they found. 

The sculptor stood watching the scene with earnest sym- 
pathy. 

“It seems irreverent,” said he at length; “intrusive, if 
not irreverent, for a third person to thrust himself between 
the two solely concerned in a crisis like the present. Yet, 
possibly as a by-stander, though a deeply interested one, I 
may discern somewhat of truth that is hidden from you 
both; nay, at least interpret or suggest some ideas which 
you might not so readily convey to each other.” 

“Speak!” said Miriam. “We confide in you.” 

“Speak!” said Donatello. “You are true and upright.” 

“I well know,” rejoined Kenyon, “that I shall not suc- 
ceed in uttering the few, deep words which, in this matter, 
as in all others, include the absolute truth. But here, 
Miriam, is one whom a terrible misfortune has begun to 
educate; it has taken him, and through your agency, out 
of a wild and happy state, which, within circumscribed 
limits, gave him joys that he cannot elsewhere find on earth. 
On his behalf, you have incurred a responsibility which you 
cannot fling aside. And here, Donatello, is one whom 
Providence marks out as intimately connected with your 
destiny. The mysterious process, by which our earthly life 
instructs us for another state of being, was begun for you 
by her. She has rich gifts of heart and mind, a suggestive 
power, a magnetic influence, a sympathetic knowledge, 
which, wisely and religiously exercised, are what your con- 
dition needs. She possesses what you require, and, with ut- 
ter self-devotion, will use it for your good. The bond be- 

326 


THE BRONZE PONTIFF’S BENEDICTION 


twixt you, therefore, is a true one, and never — except by 
Heaven’s own act — should be rent asunder.” 

“Ah; he has spoken the truth!” cried Donatello, grasp- 
ing Miriam’s hand. 

“The very truth, dear friend,” cried Miriam. 

“But take heed,” resumed the sculptor, anxious not to 
violate the integrity of his own conscience, — “take heed; 
for you love one another, and yet your bond is twined with 
such black threads that you must never look upon it as 
identical with the ties that unite other loving souls. It is 
for mutual support; it is for one another’s final good; it is 
for effort, for sacrifice, but not for earthly happiness. If 
such be your motive, believe me, friends, it were better to 
relinquish each other’s hands at this sad moment. There 
would be no holy sanction on your wedded life.” 

“None,” said Donatello, shuddering. “We know it 
well.” 

“None,” repeated Miriam, also shuddering. “United — ■ 
miserably entangled with me, rather — by a bond of guilt, 
our union might be for eternity, indeed, and most intimate; 
but, through all that endless duration, I should be conscious 
of his horror.” 

“Not for earthly bliss, therefore,” said Kenyon, “but for 
mutual elevation, and encouragement towards a severe and 
painful life, you take each other’s hands. And if, out of 
toil, sacrifice, prayer, penitence, and earnest effort towards 
right things, there comes, at length, a sombre and thought- 
ful happiness, taste it, and thank Heaven! So that you 
live not for it, — so that it be a wayside flower, springing 
along a path that leads to higher ends, — it will be Heaven’s 
gracious gift, and a token that it recognizes your union here 
below.” 

“Have you no more to say?” asked Miriam, earnestly. 

S27 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


“There is matter of sorrow and lofty consolation strangely 
mingled in your words.” 

“Only this^ dear Miriam,” said the sculptor; “if ever in 
your lives the highest duty should require from either of 
you the sacrifice of the other, meet the occasion without 
shrinking. This is all.” 

While Kenyon spoke, Donatello had evidently taken in 
the ideas which he propounded, and had ennobled them by 
the sincerity of his reception. His aspect unconsciously 
assumed a dignity, which, elevating his former beauty, ac- 
corded with the change that had long been taking place 
in his interior self. He was a man, revolving grave and 
deep thoughts in his breast. He still held Miriam’s hand; 
and there they stood, the beautiful man, the beautiful wo- 
man, united forever, as they felt, in the presence of these 
thousand eye-witnesses, who gazed so curiously at the un- 
intelligible scene. Doubtless, the crowd recognized them 
as lovers, and fancied this a betrothal that was destined to 
result in life-long happiness. And, possibly, it might be 
so. Who can tell where happiness may come; or where, 
though an expected guest, it may never show its face.^ 
Perhaps — shy, subtle thing — it had crept into this sad 
marriage-bond, when the partners would have trembled at 
its presence as a crime. 

“Farewell!” said Kenyon; “I go to Rome.” 

“Farewell, true friend!” said Miriam. 

“Farewell!” said Donatello too. “May you be happy. 
You have no guilt to make you shrink from happiness.” 

At this moment it so chanced that all the three friends 
by one impulse glanced upward at the statue of Pope 
Julius; and there was the majestic figure stretching out the 
hand of benediction over them, and bending down upon 
this guilty and repentant pair its visage of grand benignity. 
There is a singular effect oftentimes when, out of the 

328 


THE BRONZE PONTIFF’S BENEDICTION 


midst of engrossing thought and deep absorption^ we sud- 
denly look up^ and eatch a glimpse of external objects. We 
seem at such moments to look farther and deeper into them, 
than by any premeditated observation; it is as if they met 
our eyes alive, and with all their hidden meaning on the 
surface, but grew again inanimate and inscrutable the 
instant that they became aware of our glances. So now, 
at that unexpected glimpse, Miriam, Donatello, and the 
sculptor, all three imagined that they beheld the bronze 
pontiff endowed with spiritual life. A blessing was felt 
descending upon them from his outstretched hand; he ap- 
proved by look and gesture the pledge of a deep union that 
had passed imder his auspices. 


329 


CHAPTER XXXVI 
Hildas Tower 

When we have once known Rome, and left her where 
she lies, like a long-decaying corpse, retaining a trace of 
the noble shape it was, but with accumulated dust and a 
fungous growth overspreading all its more admirable fea- 
tures, — left her in utter weariness, no doubt, of her nar- 
row, crooked, intricate streets, so uncomfortably paved with 
little squares of lava that to tread over them is a penitential 
pilgrimage, so indescribably ugly, moreover, so cold, so 
alley-like, into which the sun never falls, and where a chill 
wind forces its deadly breath into our lungs, — left her, tired 
of the sight of those immense seven-storied, yellow-washed 
hovels, or call them palaces, where all that is dreary in 
domestic life seems magnified and multiplied, and weary 
of climbing those staircases, which ascend from a ground- 
floor of cook-shops, cobblers’ stalls, stables, and regiments 
of cavalry, to a middle region of princes, cardinals, and 
ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists, just beneath the 
unattainable sky, — ^left her, worn out with shivering at the 
cheerless and smoky fireside by day, and feasting with our 
own substance the ravenous little populace of a Roman bed 
at night, — left her, sick at heart of Italian trickery, which 
has uprooted whatever faith in man’s integrity had en- 
dured till now, and sick at stomach of sour bread, sour 
wine, rancid butter, and bad cookery, needlessly bestowed 
on evil meats, — ^left her, disgusted with the pretence of 
holiness and the reality of nastiness, each equally omnipres- 

330 


HILDA’S TOWER 


ent, — ^left her^ half lifeless from the languid atmosphere, 
the vital principle of which has been used up long ago, or 
corrupted by myriads of slaughters, — left her, crushed 
down in spirit with the desolation of her ruin, and the hope- 
lessness of her future, — left her, in short, hating her with 
all our might, and adding our individual curse to the in- 
finite anathema which her old crimes have unmistakably 
brought down, — when we have left Rome in such mood as 
this, we are astonished by the discovery, by and by, that 
our heart-strings have mysteriously attached themselves to 
the Eternal City, and are drawing us thitherward again, 
as if it were more familiar, more intimately our home, than 
even the spot where we were born. 

It is with a kindred sentiment, that we now follow the 
course of our story back through the Flaminian Gate, and, 
treading our way to the Via Portoghese, climb the staircase 
to the upper chamber of the tower where we last saw Hilda. 

Hilda all along intended to pass the summer in Rome; 
for she had laid out many high and delightful tasks, which 
she could the better complete while her favorite haunts 
were deserted by the multitude that thronged them through- 
out the winter and early spring. Nor did she dread the 
summer atmosphere, although generally held to be so pesti- 
lential. She had already made trial of it, two years before, 
and found no worse effect than a kind of dreamy languor, 
which was dissipated by the first cool breezes that came 
with autumn. The thickly populated centre of the city, in- 
deed, is never affected by the feverish influence that lies in 
wait in the Campagna, like a besieging foe, and nightly 
haunts those beautiful lawns and woodlands, around the 
suburban villas, just at tho season when they most re- 
semble Paradise. What the flaming sword was to the first 
Eden, such is the malaria to these sweet gardens and 
groves. We may wander through them, of an afternoon, 

331 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


it is true_, but they cannot be made a home and a reality, 
and to sleep among them is death. They are but illusions, 
therefore, like the show of gleaming waters and shadowy 
foliage in a desert. 

But Rome, within the walls, at this dreaded season, en- 
joys its festal days, and makes itself merry with charac- 
teristic and hereditary pastimes, for which its broad piaz- 
zas afford abundant room. It leads its own life with a 
freer spirit, now that the artists and foreign visitors are 
scattered abroad. No bloom, perhaps, would be visible in 
a cheek that should be unvisited, throughout the summer, 
by more invigorating winds than any within fifty miles of 
the city; no bloom, but yet, if the piind kept its healthy 
energy, a subdued and colorless well-being. There was 
consequently little risk in Hilda’s purpose to pass the sum- 
mer days in the galleries of Roman palaces, and her nights 
in that aerial chamber, whither the heavy breath of the 
city and its suburbs could not aspire. It would probably 
harm her no more than it did the white doves, who sought 
the same high atmosphere at sunset, and, when morning 
came, flew down into the narrow streets, about their daily 
business, as Hilda likewise did. 

With the Virgin’s aid and blessing, which might be hoped 
for even by a heretic, who so religiously lit the lamp be- 
fore her shrine, the New England girl would sleep securely 
in her old Roman tower, and go forth on her pictorial pil- 
grimages without dread or peril. In view of such a sum- 
mer, Hilda had anticipated many months of lonely, but un- 
alloyed enjoyment. Not that she had a churlish disinclina- 
tion to society, or needed to be .told that we taste one intel- 
lectual pleasure twice, and with double the result, when we 
taste it with a friend. But, keeping a maiden heart within 
her bosom, she rejoiced in the freedom that enabled her 

S32 


HILDA’S TOWER 


still to choose her own sphere,, and dwell in it, if she 
pleased, without another inmate. 

Her expectation, however, of a delightful summer was 
wofully disappointed. Even had she formed no previous 
plan of remaining there, it is improbable that Hilda would 
have gathered energy to stir from Rome. A torpor, here- 
tofore unknown to her vivacious though quiet temperament, 
had possessed itself of the poor girl, like a half-dead ser- 
pent knotting its cold, inextricable wreaths about her limbs. 
It was that peculiar despair, that chill and heavy misery, 
which only the innocent can experience, although it pos- 
sesses many of the gloomy characteristics that mark a sense 
of guilt. It was that heartsickness, which, it is to be hoped, 
we may all of us have been pure enough to feel, once in 
our lives, but the capacity for which is usually exhausted 
early, and perhaps with a single agony. It was that dis- 
mal certainty of the existence of evil in the world, which, 
though we may fancy ourselves fully assured of the sad 
mystery long before, never becomes a portion of our prac- 
tical belief until it takes substance and reality from the sin 
of some guide, whom we have deeply trusted and revered, 
or some friend whom we have dearly loved. 

When that knowledge comes, it is as if a cloud had sud- 
denly gathered over the morning light; so dark a cloud, 
that there seems to be no longer any sunshine behind it or 
above it. The character of our individual beloved one hav- 
ing invested itself with all the attributes of right, — that 
one friend being to us the symbol and representative of 
whatever is good and true, — ^when he falls, the effect is 
almost as if the sky fell with him, bringing down in chaotic 
ruin the columns that upheld our faith. We struggle forth 
again, no doubt, bruised and bewildered. We stare wildly 
about us, and discover — or, it may be, we never make the 
discovery — that it was not actually the sky that has tumbled 

333 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


down^ but merely a frail structure of our own rearing^ 
which never rose higher than the house-tops, and has fallen 
because we founded it on nothing. But the crash, and the 
affright and trouble, are as overwhelming, for the time, as 
if the catastrophe involved the whole moral world. Re- 
membering these things, let them suggest one generous mo- 
tive for walking heedfully amid the defilement of earthly 
ways ! Let us reflect, that the highest path is pointed out by 
the pure Ideal of those who look up to us, and who, if we 
tread less loftily, may never look sp high again. 

Hilda’s situation was made infinitely more wretched by 
the necessity of confining all her trouble within her own 
consciousness. To this innocent girl, holding the knowl- 
edge of Miriam’s crime within her tender and delicate soul, 
the eff*ect was almost the same as if she herself had par- 
ticipated in the guilt. Indeed, partaking the human na- 
ture of those who could perpetrate such deeds, she felt her 
own spotlessness impugned. 

Had there been but a single friend, — or, not a friend, 
since friends were no longer to be confided in, after Mir- 
iam had betrayed her trust, — ^but, had there been any calm, 
'wise mind, any sympathizing intelligence; or, if not these, 
any dull, half-listening ear into which she might have flung 
the dreadful secret, as into an echoless cavern, — what a re- 
lief would have ensued! But this awful loneliness! It en- 
veloped her whithersoever she went. It was a shadow in 
the sunshine of festal days; a mist between her eyes and 
the pictures at which she strove to look; a chill dungeon, 
which kept her in its gray twilight and fed her with its 
unwholesome air, fit only for a criminal to breathe and pine 
in! She could not escape from it. In the effort to do so, 
straying farther into the intricate passages of our nature, 
she stumbled, ever and again, over this deadly idea of mor- 
tal guilt. 


334 


HILDA’S TOWER 


Poor sufferer for another’s sin! Poor well-spring of a 
virgin’s heart, into which a murdered corpse had casually 
fallen, and whence it could not be drawn forth again, but 
lay there, day after day, night after night, tainting its 
sweet atmosphere with the scent of crime and ugly death ! 

The strange sorrow that had befallen Hilda did not fail 
to impress its mysterious seal upon her face, and to make 
itself perceptible to sensitive observers in her manner and 
carriage. A young Italian artist, who frequented the same 
galleries which Hilda haunted, grew deeply interested in 
her expression. One day, while she stood before Leonardo 
da Vinci’s picture of Joanna of Aragon, but evidently with- 
out seeing it, — for, though it had attracted her eyes, a 
fancied resemblance to Miriam had immediately drawn 
away her thoughts, — ^this artist drew a hasty sketch which 
he afterwards elaborated into a finished portrait. It repre- 
sented Hilda as gazing with sad and earnest horror at a 
blood-spot which she seemed just then to have discovered 
on her white robe. The picture attracted considerable no- 
tice. Copies of an engraving from it may still be found in 
the print-shops along the Corso. By many connoisseurs, 
the idea of the face was supposed to have been suggested 
by the portrait of Beatrice Cenci; and, in fact, there was 
a look somewhat similar to poor Beatrice’s forlorn gaze out 
of the dreary isolation and remoteness, in which a terrible 
doom had involved a tender soul. But the modern artist 
strenuously upheld the originality of his own picture, as 
well as the stainless purity of its subject, and chose to call 
it — and was laughed at for his pains — “Innocenee, dying 
of a blood-stain!” 

‘‘Your picture. Signore Panini, does you credit,” re- 
marked the picture-dealer, who had bought it of the young 
man for fifteen scudi, and afterwards sold it for ten times 
the sum; “but it would be worth a better price if you had 

335 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


given it a more intelligible title. Looking at the face and 
expression of this fair signorina, we seem to comprehend 
readily enough^ that she is undergoing one or another of 
those troubles of the heart to which young ladies are but 
too liable. But what is this blood-stain.^ And what has 
innocence to do with it? Has she stabbed her perfidious 
lover with a bodkin?” 

“She! she commit a crime!” cried the young artist. 
“Can you look at the innocent anguish in her face, and ask 
that question? No; but, as I read the mystery, a man has 
been slain in her presence, and the blood, spurting acciden- 
tally on her white robe, has made a stain which eats into 
her life.” 

“Then, in the name of her patron saint,” exclaimed the 
picture-dealer, “why don’t she get the robe made white 
again at the expense of a few baiocchi to her washer-wo- 
man? No, no, my dear Panini. The picture being now my 
property, I shall call it ‘The Signorina’s Vengeance.’ She 
has stabbed her lover over night, and is repenting it betimes 
the next morning. So interpreted, the picture becomes an 
intelligible and very natural representation of a not uncom- 
mon fact.” 

Thus coarsely does the world translate all finer griefs 
that meet its eye. It is more a coarse world than an un- 
kind one. 

But Hilda sought nothing either from the world’s deli- 
cacy or its pity, and never dreamed of its misinterpreta- 
tions. Her doves often flew in through the windows of the 
tower, winged messengers, bringing her what sympathy 
they could, and uttering soft, tender, and complaining 
sounds, deep in their bosoms, which soothed the girl more 
than a distincter utterance might. And sometimes Hilda 
moaned quietly among the doves, teaching her voice to ac- 
cord with theirs, and thus finding a temporary relief from 

336 


HILDA’S TOWER 


the burden of her incommunicable sorrow^ as if a little por- 
tion of it^ at least, had been told to these innocent friends, 
and been understood and pitied. 

When she trimmed the lamp before the Virgin’s shrine, 
Hilda gazed at the sacred image, and, rude as was the work- 
manship, beheld, or fancied, expressed with the quaint, 
powerful simplicity which sculptors sometimes had five 
hundred years ago, a woman’s tenderness responding to 
her gaze. If she knelt, if she prayed, if her oppressed 
heart besought the sympathy of divine womanhood afar in 
bliss, but not remote, because forever humanized by the 
memory of mortal griefs, was Hilda to be blamed? It was 
not a Catholic kneeling at an idolatrous shrine, but a child 
lifting its tear-stained face to seek comfort from a mother. 


337 


CHAPTER XXXVII 

j 

The Emptiness of Picture Galleries ' 

Hilda descended^ day by day, from her dove-cote, and j 
went to one or another of the great, old palaces, — the Pam- ■ 
fili Doria, the Corsini, the Sciarra, the Borghese, the Colon- i 
na, — where the door-keepers knew her well, and offered I 
her a kindly greeting. But they shook their heads and j 
sighed, on observing the languid step with which the poor 
girl toiled up the grand marble staircases. There was no | 
more of that cheery alacrity with which she used to flit up- | 
ward, as if her doves had lent her their wings, nor of that \ 
glow of happy spirits which had been wont to set the tar- ' 
nished gilding of the picture-frames and the shabby splen- 
dor of the furniture all a-glimmer, as she hastened to her 
congenial and delightful toil. 

An old German artist, whom she often met in the gal- 
leries, once laid a paternal hand on Hilda’s head, and bade 
her go back to her own country. 

‘‘Go back soon,” he said, with kindly freedom and direct- ! 
ness, “or you will go never more. And, if you go not, why, 
at least, do you spend the whole summer-time in Rome? - 
The air has been breathed too often, in so many thousand 
years, and is not wholesome for a little foreign flower like 
you, my child, a delicate wood-anemone from the Western 
forest-land.” 

“I have no task nor duty anywhere but here,” replied 
Hilda. “ The old masters will not set me free!” 

“Ah, those old masters !” cried the veteran artist, shaking 
S38 


EMPTINESS OF PICTURE GALLERIES 


his head. “They are a tyrannous race! You will find 
them of too mighty a spirit to be dealt with, for long to- 
gether, by the slender hand, the fragile mind, and the 
delicate heart, of a young girl. Remember that Raphael’s 
genius wore out that divinest painter before half his life 
was lived. Since you feel his influence powerfully enough 
to reproduce his miracles so well, it will assuredly consume 
you like a flame.” 

“That might have been my peril once,” answered Hilda. 
“It is not so now.” 

“Yes, fair maiden, you stand in that peril now!” insisted 
the kind old man; and he added, smiling, yet in a melan- 
choly vein, and with a German grotesqueness of idea, 
“Some fine morning, I shall come to the Pinacotheca of the 
Vatican, with my palette and my brushes, and shall look for 
my little American artist that sees into the very heart of 
the grand pictures ! And what shall I behold ? A heap of 
white ashes on the marble floor, just in front of the divine 
Raphael’s picture of the Madonna da Foligno! Nothing 
more, upon my word! The fire, which the poor child feels 
so fervently, will have gone into her innermost, and burnt 
her quite up !” 

“It would be a happy martyrdom!” said Hilda, faintly 
smiling. “But I am far from being worthy of it. What 
troubles me much, among other troubles, is quite the re- 
verse of what you think. The old masters hold me here, 
it is true, but they no longer warm me with their influence. 
It is not fljlme consuming, but torpor chilling me, that helps 
to make me wretched.” 

“Perchance, then,” said the German, looking keenly at 
her, “Raphael has a rival in your heart? He was your 
first-love; but young maidens are not always constant, and 
one flame is sometimes extinguished by another !” 

Hilda shook her head, and turned away. 

339 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


She had spoken the truths however, in alleging that tor- . 
por, rather than fire, was what she had now to dread. In 
those gloomy days that had befallen her, it was a great ad- 
ditional calamity that she felt conscious of the present dim- 
ness of an insight, which she once possessed in more than 
ordinary measure. She had lost — and she trembled lest it 
should have departed forever — the faculty of appreciating 
those great works of art, which heretofore had made so 
large a portion of her happiness. It was no wonder. 

A picture, however admirable the painter’s art, and 
wonderful his power, requires of the spectator a surrender 
of himself, in due proportion with the miracle which has 
been wrought. Let the canvas glow as it may, you must 
look with the eye of faith, or its highest excellence escapes 
you. There is always the necessity of helping out the 
painter’s art with your own resources of sensibility and 
imagination. Not that these qualities shall really add any- 
thing to what the master has effected; but they must be 
put so entirely under his control, and work along with him 
to such an extent, that, in a different mood, when you are 
cold and critical, instead of sympathetic, you will be apt to 
fancy that the loftier merits of the picture were of your 
own dreaming, not of his creating. 

Like all revelations of the better life, the adequate per- 
ception of a great work of art demands a gifted simplicity 
of vision. In this, and in her self-surrender, and the depth 
and tenderness of her sympathy, had lain Hilda’s remark- 
able power as a copyist of the old masters. And now that 
her capacity of emotion was choked up with a horrible ex- 
perience, it inevitably followed that she should seek in vain, 
among those friends so venerated and beloved, for the 
marvels which they had heretofore shown her. In spite of 
a reverence that lingered longer than her recognition, their 
poor worshipper became almost an infidel, and sometimes 

S4Q 


EMPTINESS OF PICTURE GALLERIES 


doubted whether the pictorial art be not altogether a de- 
lusion. 

For the first time in her life^ Hilda now grew acquainted 
with that icy demon of weariness^ who haunts great picture 
galleries. He is a plausible Mephistopheles^ and possesses 
the magic that is the destruction of all other magic. He 
annihilates color^ warmth^ and, more especially, sentiment 
and passion, at a touch. If he spare anything, it will be 
some such matter as an earthen pipkin, or a bunch of her- 
rings by Teniers; a brass kettle, in which you can see your 
face, by Gerard Douw; a furred robe, or the silken tex- 
ture of a mantle, or a straw hat, by Van Mieris; or a long- 
stalked wine-glass, transparent and full of shifting reflec- 
tion, or a bit of bread and cheese, or an over-ripe peach, 
with a fly upon it, truer than reality itself, by the school of 
Dutch conjurers. These men, and a few Flemings, 
whispers the wicked demon, were the only painters. The 
mighty Italian masters, as you deem them, were not human, 
nor addressed their work to human sympathies, but to a 
false intellectual taste, which they themselves were the first 
to create. Well might they call their doings “art,” for they 
substituted art instead of nature. Their fashion is past, 
and ought, indeed, to have died and been buried along with 
them. 

Then there is such a terrible lack of variety in their sub- 
jects. The churchmen, their great patrons, suggested 
most of their themes, and a dead mythology the rest. A 
quarter-part, probably, of any large collection of pictures, 
consists of Virgins and infant Christs, repeated over and 
over again in pretty much an identical spirit, and generally 
with no more mixture of the Divine than just enough to spoil 
them as representations of maternity and childhood, with 
which everybody’s heart might have something to do. Half 
of the other pictures are Magdalens, Flights into Egypt, 

841 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


Crucifixions^ Depositions from the Cross^ Pietas, Noli-me- 
tangeres, or the Sacrifice of Abraham, or martyrdoms of 
saints, originally painted as altar-pieces, or for the shrines 
of chapels, and wofully lacking the accompaniments which 
the artist had in view. 

The remainder of the gallery comprises mythological 
subjects, such as nude Venuses, Ledas, Graces, and, in 
short, a general apotheosis of nudity, once fresh and rosy 
perhaps, but yellow and dingy in our day, and retaining 
only a traditionary charm. These impure pictures are from 
the same illustrious and impious hands that adventured to 
call before us the august forms of Apostles and Saints, the 
Blessed Mother of the Redeemer, and her Son, at his death, 
and in his glory, and even the awfulness of Him, to whom 
the martyrs, dead a thousand years ago, have not yet dared 
to raise their eyes. They seem to take up one task or the 
other — the disrobed woman whom they call Venus, or the 
type of highest and tenderest womanhood in the mother of 
their Saviour — with equal readiness, but to achieve the 
former with far more satisfactory success. If an artist 
sometimes produced a picture of the Virgin, possessing 
warmth enough to excite devotional feelings, it was prob- 
ably the object of his earthly love to whom he thus paid 
the stupendous and fearful homage of setting up her por- 
trait to be worshipped, not figuratively as a mortal, but by 
religious souls in their earnest aspirations towards Divin- 
ity. And who can trust the religious sentiment of Raphael, 
or receive any of his Virgins as heaven-descended like- 
nesses, after seeing, for example, the Fornarina of the Bar- 
berini Palace, and feeling how sensual the artist must have 
been to paint such a brazen trollop of his own accord, and 
lovingly? Would the Blessed Mary reveal herself to his 
spiritual vision, and favor him with sittings alternately 
with that type of glowing earthliness, the Fornarina? 

342 


EMPTINESS OF PICTURE GALLERIES 


But no sooner have we given expression to this irreverent 
criticism^ than a throng of spiritual faces look reproach- 
fully upon us. We see cherubs by Raphael, whose baby- 
innocence could only have been nursed in paradise; angels 
by Raphael as innocent as they, but whose serene intelli- 
gence embraces both earthly and celestial things; madon- 
nas by Raphael, on whose lips he has impressed a holy and 
delicate reserve, implying sanctity on earth, and into whose 
soft eyes he has thrown a light which he never could have 
imagined except by raising his own eyes with a pure as- 
piration heavenward. We remember, too, that divinest 
countenance in the Transfiguration, and withdraw all that 
we have said. 

Poor Hilda, however, in her gloomiest moments was 
never guilty of the high treason suggested in the above re- 
marks against her beloved and honored Raphael. She had 
a faculty (which, fortunately for themselves, pure women 
often have) of ignoring all moral blotches in a character 
that won her admiration. She purified the objects of her 
regard by the mere act of turning such spotless eyes upon 
them. 

Hilda’s despondency, nevertheless, while it dulled her 
perceptions in one respect, had deepened them in another; 
she saw beauty less vividly, but felt truth, or the lack of it, 
more profoundly. She began to suspect that some, at least, 
of her venerated painters, had left an inevitable hollowness 
in their works, because, in the most renowned of them, they 
essayed to express to the world what they had not in their 
own souls. They deified their light and wandering affec- 
tions, and were continually playing off the tremendous jest, 
alluded to above, of offering the features of some venal 
beauty to be enshrined in the holiest places. A deficiency 
of earnestness and absolute truth is generally discoverable 
in Italian pictures, after the art had become consummate. 

343 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

When you demand what is deepest, these painters have not 
wherewithal to respond. They substituted a keen intellec- 
tual perception, and a marvellous knack of external arrange- 
ment, instead of the live sympathy and sentiment which 
should have been their inspiration. And hence it happens, 
that shallow and worldly men are among the best critics of 
their works; a taste for pictorial art is often no more than 
a polish upon the hard enamel of an artificial character. 
Hilda had lavished her whole heart upon it and found 
(just as if she had lavished it upon a human idol) that 
the greater part was thrown away. 

For some of the earlier painters, however, she still re- 
tained much of her former reverence. Fra Angelico, she 
felt, must have breathed a humble aspiration between every 
two touches of his brush, in order to have made the finished 
picture such a visible prayer as we behold it, in the guise 
of a prim angel, or a saint without the human nature. 
Through all these dusky centuries, his works may still help 
a struggling heart to pray. Perugino was evidently a de- 
vout man; and the Virgin, therefore, revealed herself to 
him in loftier and sweeter faces of celestial womanhood, 
and yet with a kind of homeliness in their human mould, 
than even the genius of Raphael could imagine. Sodoma, 
beyond a question, both prayed and wept, while painting 
his fresco, at Siena, of Christ bound to a pillar. 

In her present need and hunger for a spiritual revelation, 
Hilda felt a vast and weary longing to see this last-men- 
tioned picture once again. It is inexpressibly touching. 
So weary is the Saviour, and utterly worn out with agony, 
that his lips have fallen apart from mere exhaustion; his 
eyes seem to be set; he tries to lean his head against the 
pillar, but is kept from sinking down upon the ground only 
by the cords that bind him. One of the most striking 
effects produced is the sense of loneliness. You behold 

344 


EMPTINESS OF PICTURE GALLERIES 


Christ deserted both in heaven and earth; that despair is in 
him which wrung forth the saddest utterance man ever 
made, “Why hast Thou forsaken me?” Even in this ex- 
tremity, however, he is still divine. The great and reverent 
painter has not suffered the Son of God to be merely an 
object of pity, though depicting him in a state so profound- 
ly pitiful. He is rescued from it, we know not how, — ^by 
nothing less than miracle, — by a celestial majesty and 
beauty, and some quality of which these are the outward 
garniture. He is as much, and as visibly, our Redeemer, 
there bound, there fainting, and bleeding from the scourge, 
with the cross in view, as if he sat on his throne of glory in 
the heavens ! Sodoma, in this matchless picture, has done 
more towards reconciling the incongruity of Divine Omni- 
potence and outraged, suffering Humanity, combined in one 
person, than the theologians ever did. 

This hallowed work of genius shows what pictorial art, 
devoutly exercised, might effect in behalf of religious 
truth; involving, as it does, deeper mysteries of revelation, 
and bringing them closer to man’s heart, and making him 
tenderer to be impressed by them, than the most eloquent 
words of preacher or prophet. 

It is not of pictures like the above that galleries, in Rome 
or elsewhere, are made up, but of productions immeasur- 
ably below them, and requiring to be appreciated by a very 
different frame of mind. Few amateurs are endowed with 
a tender susceptibility to the sentiment of a picture; they 
are not won from an evil life, nor anywise morally im- 
proved by it. The love of art, therefore, differs widely in 
its influence from the love of nature; whereas, if art had not 
strayed away from its legitimate paths and aims, it ought 
to soften and sweeten the lives of its worshippers, in even 
a more exquisite degree than the contemplation of natural 
objects. But, of its own potency, it has no such effect; and 

345 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


it fails, likewise, in that other test of its moral value which 
poor Hilda was now involuntarily trying upon it. It can- 
not comfort the heart in affliction; it grows dim when the 
shadow is upon us. 

So the melancholy girl wandered through those long gal- 
leries, and over the mosaic pavements of vast, solitary sa- 
loons, wondering what had become of the splendor that 
used to beam upon her from the walls. She grew sadly 
critical, and condemned almost everything that she was 
wont to admire. Heretofore, her sympathy went deeply 
into a picture, yet seemed to leave a depth which it was in- 
adequate to sound; now, on the contrary, her perceptive 
faculty penetrated the canvas like a steel probe, and found 
but a crust of paint over an emptiness. Not that she gave 
up all art as worthless; only it had lost its consecration. 
One picture in ten thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the 
applause of mankind, from generation to generation, until 
the colors fade and blacken out of sight, or the canvas rot 
entirely away. For the rest, let them be piled in garrets^ 
just as the tolerable poets are shelved, when their little day 
is over. Is a painter more sacred than a poet? 

And as for these galleries of Roman palaces, they were 
to Hilda, — though she still trod them with the forlorn hope 
of getting back her sympathies, — they were drearier than 
the whitewashed walls of a prison corridor. If a mag- 
nificent palace were founded, as was generally the case, on 
hardened guilt and a stony conscience, — if the prince or 
cardinal who stole the marble of his vast mansion from the 
Coliseum, or some Roman temple, had perpetrated still 
deadlier crimes, as probably he did, — ^there could be no fit- 
ter punishment for his ghost than to wander perpetually 
through these long suites of rooms, over the cold marble or 
mosaic of the floors, growing chiller at every eternal foot- 
step. Fancy the progenitor of the Dorias thus haunting 

S4>6 


EMPTINESS OF PICTURE GALLERIES 


those heavy halls where his posterity reside! Nor would it 
assuage his monotonous misery^ but increase it manifold, to 
be compelled to scrutinize those masterpieces of art, which 
he collected with so much cost and care, and gazing at 
them unintelligently, still leave a further portion of his 
vital warmth at every one. 

Such, or of a similar kind, is the torment of those who 
seek to enjoy pictures in an uncongenial mood. Every 
haunter of picture galleries, we should imagine, must have 
experienced it, in greater or less degree; Hilda never till 
now, but now most bitterly. 

And now, for the first time in her lengthened absence, 
comprising so many years of her young life, she began to 
be acquainted with the exile’s pain. Her pictorial im- 
agination brought up vivid scenes of her native village, with 
its great, old elm-trees; and the neat, comfortable houses, 
scattered along the wide, grassy margin of its street, and 
the white meeting-house, and her mother’s very door, and 
the stream of gold-brown water, which her taste for color 
had kept flowing, all this while, through her remembrance. 
Oh, dreary streets, palaces, churches, and imperial sepul- 
chres of hot and dusty Rome, with the muddy Tiber eddy- 
ing through the midst, instead of the gold-brown rivulet! 
How she pined under this crumbly magnificence, as if it 
were piled all upon her human heart! How she yearned 
for that native homeliness, those familiar sights, those 
faces which she had known always, those days that never 
brought any strange event; that life of sober week-days, 
and a solemn sabbath at the close! The peculiar fragrance 
of a flower-bed, which Hilda used to cultivate, came fresh- 
ly to her memory, across the windy sea, and through the 
long years since the flowers had withered. Her heart grew 
faint at the hundred reminiscences that were awakened by 
that remembered smell of dead blossoms ; it was like opem 

347 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


ing a drawer, where many things were laid away, and 
every one of them scented with lavender and dried rose- 
leaves. 

We ought not to betray Hilda’s secret; but it is the 
truth, that being so sad, and so utterly alone, and in 
such great need of sympathy, her thoughts sometimes 
recurred to the sculptor. Had she met him now, her 
heart, indeed, might not have been won, but her con- 
fidence would have flown to him like a bird to its nest. 
One summer afternoon, especially, Hilda leaned upon 
the battlements of her tower, and looked over Rome to- ^ 
wards the distant mountains, whither Kenyon had told :< 
her that he was going. 

“Oh, that he were here!” she sighed; “I perish under 
this terrible secret ; and he might help me to endure it. Oh, 
that he were here !” 

That very afternoon, as the reader may remember, Ken- ' 
yon felt Hilda’s hand pulling at the silken cord that was i 
connected with his heartstrings, as he stood looking towards 
Rome from the battlements of Monte Beni. i 


S48 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 
Altars and Incense 

Rome has a certain species of consolation readier at hand, 
for all the necessitous, than any other spot under the sky; 
and Hilda’s despondent state made her peculiarly liable to 
the peril, if peril it can justly be termed, of seeking, or 
consenting, to be thus consoled. 

Had the Jesuits known the situation of this troubled 
heart, her inheritance of New England Puritanism would 
hardly have protected the poor girl from the pious strategy 
of those good fathers. Knowing, as they do, how to work 
each proper engine, it would have been ultimately impossi- 
ble for Hilda to resist the attractions of a faith, which so 
marvellously adapts itself to every human need. Not, 
indeed, that it can satisfy the soul’s cravings, but, at least, 
it can sometimes help the soul towards a higher satisfaction 
than the faith contains within itself. It supplies a multi- 
tude of external forms, in which the spiritual may be 
clothed and manifested; it has many painted windows, 
as it were, through which the celestial sunshine, else dis- 
regarded, may make itself gloriously perceptible in visions 
of beauty and splendor. There is no one want or weakness 
of human nature for which Catholicism will own itself 
without a remedy; cordials, certainly, it possesses in 
abundance, and sedatives in inexhaustible variety, and 
what may once have been genuine medicaments, though a 
little the worse for long keeping. 

To do it justice, Catholicism is such a miracle of fitness 
349 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

for its own ends, many of which might seem to be admir- 
able ones, that it is difficult to imagine it a contrivance of 
mere man. Its mighty machinery was forged and put 
together, not on middle earth, but either above or below* 
If there were but angels to work it, instead of the very 
different class of engineers who now manage its cranks 
and safety-valves, the system would soon vindicate the 
dignity and holiness of its origin. 

Hilda had heretofore made many pilgrimages among 
the churches of Rome, for the sake of wondering at their 
gorgeousness. Without a glimpse at these palaces of 
worship, it is impossible to imagine the magnificence of the 
religion that reared them. Many of them shine with 
burnished gold. They glow with pictures. Their walls, 
columns, and arches seem a quarry of precious stones, so 
beautiful and costly are the marbles with which they are 
inlaid. Their pavements are often a mosaic, of rare work- 
manship. Around their lofty cornices hover flights of 
sculptured angels; and within the vault of the ceiling and 
the swelling interior of the dome, there are frescos of 
such brilliancy, and wrought with so artful a perspective, 
that the sky, peopled with sainted forms, appears to be 
opened, only a little way above the spectator. Then there 
are chapels, opening from the side-aisles and transepts, 
decorated by princes for their own burial-places, and as 
shrines for their especial saints. In these, the splendor 
of the entire edifice is intensified and gathered to a focus. 
Unless words were gems, that would flame with many- 
colored light upon the page, and throw thence a tremulous 
glimmer into the reader’s eyes, it were vain to attempt a 
description of a princely chapel. 

Restless with her trouble, Hilda now entered upon 
another pilgrimage among these altars and shrines. She 
climbed the hundred steps of the Ara Coeli; she trod the 

350 


ALTARS AND INCENSE 


broad^ silent nave of St. John Lateran; she stood in the 
Pantheon, under the round opening in the dome, through 
which the blue simny sky still gazes down, as it used to 
gaze when there were Roman deities in the antique niches. 
She went into every church that rose before her, but 
not now to wonder at its magnificence, which she hardly 
noticed more than if it had been the pine-built interior 
of a New England meeting-house. 

She went — and it was a dangerous errand — to observe 
how closely and comfortingly the popish faith applied 
itself to all human occasions. It was impossible to doubt 
that multitudes of people found their spiritual advantage 
in it, who would find none at all in our own formless mode 
of worship; which, besides, so far as the sympathy of 
prayerful souls is concerned, can be enjoyed only at stated 
and too unfrequent periods. But here, whenever the 
hunger for divine nutriment came upon the soul, it could 
on the instant be appeased. At one or another altar, the 
incense was forever ascending; the mass always being per- 
formed, and carrying upward with it the devotion of such 
as had not words for their own prayer. And yet, if the 
worshipper had his individual petition to offer, his own 
heart-secret to whisper below his breath, there were divine 
auditors ever ready to receive it from his lips; and what 
encouraged him still more, these auditors had not always 
been divine, but kept, within their heavenly memories, the 
tender humility of a human experience. Now a saint in 
heaven, but once a man on earth. 

Hilda saw peasants, citizens, soldiers, nobles, women 
with bare heads, ladies in their silks, entering the churches 
individually, kneeling for moments, or for hours, and 
directing their inaudible devotions to the shrine of some 
saint of their own choice. In his hallowed person they felt 
themselves possessed of an own friend in heaven. They 

351 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


were too humble to approach the Deity directly. Conscious 
of their unworthiness, they asked the mediation of their 
sympathizing patron, who, on the score of his ancient 
martyrdom, and after many ages of celestial life, might 
venture to talk with the Divine Presence, almost as friend 
with friend. Though dumb before its Judge, even despair 
could speak, and pour out the misery of its soul like water, 
to an advocate so wise to comprehend the case, and eloquent 
to plead it, and powerful to win pardon, whatever were 
the guilt. Hilda witnessed what she deemed to be an 
example of this species of confidence between a young man 
and his saint. He stood before a shrine, writhing, wring- 
ing his hands, contorting his whole frame in an agony of 
remorseful recollection, but finally knelt down to weep and 
pray. If this youth had been a Protestant, he would have 
kept all that torture pent up in his heart, and let it burn 
there till it seared him into indifference. 

Often and long, Hilda lingered before the shrines 
and chapels of the Virgin, and departed from them with 
reluctant steps. Here, perhaps, strange as it may seem, 
her delicate appreciation of art stood her in good stead, 
and lost Catholicism a convert. If the painter had repre- 
sented Mary with a heavenly face, poor Hilda was now 
in the very mood to worship her, and adopt the faith in 
which she held so elevated a position. But she saw that it 
was merely the flattered portrait of an earthly beauty; the 
wife, at best, of the artist; or, it might be, a peasant-girl 
of the Campagna, or some Roman princess, to whom he 
desired to pay his court. For love, or some even less 
justifiable motive, the old painter had apotheosized these 
women; he thus gained for them, as far as his skill would 
go, not only the meed of immortality, but the privilege of 
presiding over Christian altars, and of being worshipped 
with far holier fervors than while they dwelt on earth. 

352 


ALTARS AND INCEN.SE 


Hilda’s fine sense of the fit and decorous could not be 
betrayed into kneeling at such a shrine. 

She never found just the Virgin Mother whom she 
needed. Here^ it was an earthly mother, worshipping the 
earthly baby in her lap, as any and every mother does, 
from Eve’s time downward. In another picture, there was 
a dim sense, shown in the mother’s face, of some divine 
quality in the child. In a third, the artist seemed to have 
had a higher perception, and had striven hard to shadow 
out the Virgin’s joy at bringing the Saviour into the world, 
and her awe and love, inextricably mingled, of the little 
form which she pressed against her bosom. So far was 
good. But still, Hilda looked for something more; a face 
of celestial beauty, but human as well as heavenly, and 
with the shadow of past grief upon it; bright with immortal 
youth, yet matronly and motherly ; and endowed with a 
queenly dignity, but infinitely tender, as the highest and 
deepest attribute of her divinity. 

“Ah,” thought Hilda to herself, “why should not there 
be a woman to listen to the prayers of women? a mother 
in heaven for all motherless girls like me? In all God’s 
thought and care for us, can he have withheld this boon, 
which our weakness so much needs?” 

Oftener than to the other churches, she wandered into 
St. Peter’s. Within its vast limits, she thought, and 
beneath the sweep of its great dome, there should be space 
for all forms of Christian truth; room both for the faithful 
and the heretic to kneel; due help for every creature’s 
spiritual want. 

Hilda had not always been adequately impressed by 
the grandeur of this mighty cathedral. When she first 
lifted the heavy leathern curtain, at one of the doors, a 
shadowy edifice in her imagination had been dazzled out 
of sight by the reality. Her preconception of St. Peter’s 

353 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


was a structure of no definite outline, misty in its architec- 
ture, dim and gray and huge, stretching into an inter- 
minable perspective, and overarched by a dome like the 
cloudy firmament. Beneath that vast breadth and height, as 
she had fancied them, the personal man might feel his little- 
ness, and the soul triumph in its immensity. So, in her 
earlier visits, when the compassed splendor of the actual 
interior glowed before her eyes, she had profanely called 
it a great prettiness; a gay piece of cabinet-work, on a 
Titanic scale; a jewel-casket, marvellously magnified. 

This latter image best pleased her fancy; a casket, all 
inlaid, in the inside, with precious stones of various hue, 
so that there should not be a hair’s-breadth of the small 
interior unadorned with its resplendent gem. Then, con- 
ceive this minute wonder of a mosaic box, increased to the 
magnitude of a cathedral, without losing the intense lustre 
of its littleness, but all its petty glory striving to be 
sublime. The magic transformation from the minute to 
the vast has not been so cunningly effected but that the rich 
adornment still counteracts the impression of space and 
loftiness. The spectator is more sensible of its limits than 
of its extent. 

Until after many visits, Hilda continued to mourn for 
that dim, illimitable interior, which with her eyes shut she 
had seen from childhood, but which vanished at her first 
glimpse through the actual door. Her childish vision 
seemed preferable to the cathedral which Michael Angelo, 
and all the great architects, had built; because, of the 
dream edifice, she had said, “How vast it is !” while of the 
real St. Peter’s she could only say, “After all, it is not so 
immense!” Besides, such as the church is, it can nowhere 
be made visible at one glance. It stands in its own way. 
You see an aisle, or a transept; you see the nave, or the 
tribune; but, on account of its ponderous piers and other 

354 


ALTARS AND INCENSE 


obstructions, it is only by this fragmentary process that 
you get an idea of the cathedral. 

There is no answering such objections. The great church 
smiles calmly upon its critics, and, for all response, says, 
“Look at me!” and if you still murmur for the loss of 
your shadowy perspective, there comes no reply, save, 
“Look at me!” in endless repetition, as the one thing to 
be said. And, after looking many times, with long inter- 
vals between, you discover that the cathedral has gradually 
extended itself over the whole compass of your idea; it 
covers all the site of your visionary temple, and has room 
for its cloudy pinnacles beneath the dome. 

One afternoon, as Hilda entered St. Peter’s in sombre 
mood, its interior beamed upon her with all the effect of 
a new creation. It seemed an embodiment of whatever the 
imagination could conceive, or the heart desire, as a mag- 
nificent, comprehensive, majestic symbol of religious faith. 
All splendor was included within its verge, and there was 
space for all. She gazed with delight even at the multi- 
plicity of ornament. She was glad at the cherubim that 
fluttered upon the pilasters, and of the marble doves, hover- 
ing unexpectedly, with green olive-branches of precious 
stones. She could spare nothing, now, of the manifold 
magnificence that had been lavished, in a hundred places, 
richly enough to have made world-famous shrines in any 
other church, but which here melted away into the vast 
sunny breadth, and were of no separate account. Yet each 
contributed its little all towards the grandeur of the whole. 

She would not have banished one of those grim popes, 
who sit each over his own tomb, scattering cold benedictions 
out of their marble hands; nor a single frozen sister of 
the Allegoric family, to whom — as, like hired mourners 
at an English funeral, it costs them no wear and tear of 
heart — ^is assigned the office of weeping for the dead. If 

355 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


you choose to see these things, they present themselves; 
if you deem them unsuitable and out of place, they vanish, 
individually, but leave their life upon the walls. 

The pavement! it stretched out illimitably, a plain of 
many-colored marble, where thousands of worshippers 
might kneel together, and shadowless angels tread among 
them without brushing their heavenly garments against 
those earthly ones. The roof! the dome! Rich, gorgeous, 
fiUed with sunshine, cheerfully sublime, and fadeless after 
centuries, those lofty depths seemed to translate the 
heavens to mortal comprehension, and help the spirit 
upward to a yet higher and wider sphere. Must not the 
faith, that built this matchless edifice, and warmed, illumi- 
nated, and overflowed from it, include whatever can satisfy 
human aspirations at the loftiest, or minister to human 
necessity at the sorest.^ If Religion had a material home, 
was it not here ? 

As the scene which we but faintly suggest shone calmly 
before the New England maiden at her entrance, she 
moved, as if by very instinct, to one of the vases of holy 
water, upborne against a column by two mighty cherubs. 
Hilda dipped her fingers, and had almost signed the cross 
upon her breast, but forebore, and trembled, while shaking 
the water from her finger-tips. She felt as if her mother’s 
spirit, somewhere within the dome, were looking down upon 
her child, the daughter of Puritan forefathers, and weep- 
ing to behold her ensnared by these gaudy superstitions. 
So she strayed sadly onward, up the nave, and towards 
the hundred golden lights that swarm before the high 
altar. Seeing a woman, a priest, and a soldier kneel to 
kiss the toe of the brazen St. Peter, who protrudes it 
beyond his pedestal, for the purpose, polished bright with 
former salutations, while a child stood on tiptoe to do the 
same, the glory of the church was darkened before Hilda’s 

356 


ALTARS AND INCENSE 


eyes. But again she went onward into remoter regions. 
She turned into the right transept^ and thence found her 
way to a shrine^ in the extreme corner of the edifice^ which 
is adorned with a mosaic copy of Guido’s beautiful Arch- 
angel, treading on the prostrate fiend. 

This was one of the few pictures, which, in these dreary 
days, had not faded nor deteriorated in Hilda’s estimation; 
not that it was better than many in which she no longer 
took an interest; but the subtile delicacy of the painter’s 
genius was peculiarly adapted to her character. She felt, 
while gazing at it, that the artist had done a great thing, 
not merely for the Church of Rome, but for the cause of 
Good. The moral of the picture, the immortal youth and 
loveliness of Virtue, and its irresistible might against ugly 
Evil, appealed as much to Puritans as Catholics. 

Suddenly, and as if it were done in a dream, Hilda found 
herself kneeling before the shrine, under the ever-burning 
lamp that throws its rays upon the Archangel’s face. She 
laid her forehead on the marble steps before the altar, and 
sobbed out a prayer; she hardly knew to whom, whether 
Michael, the Virgin, or the Father; she hardly knew for 
what, save only a vague longing, that thus the burden of 
her spirit might be lightened a little. 

In an instant she snatched herself up, as it were, from 
her knees, all a-throb with the emotions which were strug- 
gling to force their way out of her heart by the avenue 
that had so nearly been opened for them. Yet there was 
a strange sense of relief won by that momentary, passion- 
ate prayer; a strange joy, moreover, whether from what 
she had done, or for what she had escaped doing, Hilda 
could not tell. But she felt as one half stifled, who has 
stolen a breath of air. 

Next to the shrine where she had knelt, there is another, 
adorned with a picture by Guercino, representing a 

857 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


maiden’s body in the jaws of the sepulchre^ and her lover 
weeping over it; while her beatified spirit looks down 
upon the scene^ in the society of the Saviour and a throng 
of saints. Hilda wondered if it were not possible, by some 
miracle of faith, so to rise above her present despondency 
that she might look down upon what she was, just as 
Petronilla in the picture looked at her own corpse. A hope, 
born of hysteric trouble, fluttered in her heart. A presenti- 
ment, or what she fancied such, whispered her, that, before 
she had finished the circuit of the cathedral, relief 
would come. 

The unhappy are continually tantalized by similar 
delusions of succor near at hand; at least, the despair is 
very dark that has no such will-o’-the-wisp to glimmer in it. 


S58 


CHAPTER XXXIX 
The World's Cathedral 

Still gliding onward, Hilda now looked up into the 
dome, where the sunshine came through the western 
windows, and threw across long shafts of light. They 
rested upon the mosaic figures of two evangelists above 
the cornice. These great beams of radiance, traversing 
what seemed the empty space, were made visible in misty 
glory, by the holy cloud of incense, else unseen, which had 
risen into the middle dome. It was to Hilda as if she 
beheld the worship of the priest and people ascending 
heavenward, purified from its alloy of earth, and acquiring 
celestial substance in the golden atmosphere to which it 
aspired. She wondered if angels did not sometimes hover 
within the dome, and show themselves, in brief glimpses, 
floating amid the sunshine and the glorified vapor, to those 
who devoutly worshipped on the pavement. 

She had now come into the southern transept. Around 
this portion of the church are ranged a number of con- 
fessionals. They are small tabernacles of carved wood, 
with a closet for the priest in the centre; and, on either 
side, a space for a penitent to kneel, and breathe his 
confession through a perforated auricle into the good 
father’s ear. Observing this arrangement, though already 
familiar to her, our poor Hilda was anew impressed with 
the infinite convenience — if we may use so poor a phrase — 
of the Catholic religion to its devout believers. 

Who, in truth, that considers the matter, can resist a 

359 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

similar impression! In the hottest fever-fit of life, they 
can always find, ready for their need, a cool, quiet, beauti- 
ful place of worship. They may enter its sacred precincts 
at any hour, leaving the fret and trouble of the world 
behind them, and purifying themselves with a touch of 
holy water at the threshold. In the calm interior, fragrant 
of rich and soothing incense, they may hold converse with 
some saint, their awful, kindly friend. And, most precious 
privilege of all, whatever perplexity, sorrow, guilt, may 
weigh upon their souls, they can fling down the dark 
burden at the foot of the cross, and go forth — to sin no 
more, nor be any longer disquieted; but to live again in 
the freshness and elasticity of innocence. 

“Do not these inestimable advantages,’" thought Hilda, 
“or some of them at least, belong to Christianity itself? 
Are they not a part of the blessings which the system was 
meant to bestow upon mankind? Can the faith in which 
I was born and bred be perfect, if it leave a weak girl 
like me to wander, desolate, with this great trouble crush- 
ing me down?” 

A poignant anguish thrilled within her breast; it was 
like a thing that had life, and was struggling to get out. 

“Oh, help ! Oh, help 1” cried Hilda ; “I cannot, cannot 
bear it!” 

Only by the reverberations that followed — arch echoing 
the sound to arch, and a pope of bronze repeating it to 
a pope of marble, as each sat enthroned over his tomb — • 
did Hilda become aware that she had really spoken above 
her breath. But, in that great space, there is no need to 
hush up the heart within one’s own bosom, so carefully as 
elsewhere; and if the cry reached any distant auditor, it 
came broken into many fragments, and from various quar- 
ters of the church. 

Approaching one of the confessionals, she saw a woman 
360 


THE WORLD’S CATHEDRAL 


kneeling within. Just as Hilda drew near^ the penitent 
rose, came forth, and kissed the hand of the priest, who 
regarded her with a look of paternal benignity, and ap- 
peared to be giving her some spiritual counsel, in a low 
voice. She then knelt to receive his blessing, which was 
fervently bestowed. Hilda was so struck with the peace 
and joy in the woman’s face, that, as the latter retired, 
she could not help speaking to her. 

“You look very happy!” said she. “Is it so sweet, then, 
to go to the confessional?” 

“Oh, very sweet, my dear signorina!” answered the 
woman, with moistened eyes and an affectionate smile; 
for she was so thoroughly softened with what she had 
been doing, that she felt as if Hilda were her younger 
sister. “My heart is at rest now. Thanks be to the Saviour, 
and the Blessed Virgin and the saints, and this good father, 
there is no more trouble for poor Teresa!” 

“I am glad for your sake,” said Hilda, sighing for her 
own. “I am a poor heretic, but a human sister; and I 
rejoice for you!” 

She went from one to another of the confessionals, and, 
looking at each, perceived that they were inscribed with 
gilt letters: on one. Pro Italica Lingua; on another. Pro 
Flandrica Lingua; on a third. Pro Polonica Lingua; 
on a fourth. Pro Illyrica Lingua; on a fifth. Pro His- 
PANiCA Lingua. In this vast and hospitable cathedral, 
worthy to be the religious heart of the whole world, there 
was room for all nations; there was access to the Divine 
Grace for every Christian soul; there was an ear for what 
the overburdened heart might have to murmur, speak in 
what native tongue it would. 

When Hilda had almost completed the circuit of the 
transept, she came to a confessional — the central part was 
closed, but a mystic rod protruded from it, indicating the 

361 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

presence of a priest within — on which was inscribed^ 
Pro Anglica Lingua. 

It was the word in season! If she had heard her 
mother’s voice from within the tabernacle^ calling her, in 
her own mother-tongue, to come and lay her poor head in 
her lap, and sob out all her troubles, Hilda could not have 
responded with a more inevitable obedience. She did not 
think; she only felt. Within her heart was a great need. 
Close at hand, within the veil of the confessional, was the 
relief. She flung herself down in the penitent’s place; and, 
tremulously, passionately, with sobs, tears, and the turbu- 
lent overflow of emotion too long repressed, she poured out 
the dark story which had infused its poison into her inno- 
cent life. 

Hilda had not seen, nor could she now see the visage 
of the priest. But, at intervals, in the pauses of that 
strange confession, half choked by the struggle of her 
feelings toward an outlet, she heard a mild, calm voice, 
somewhat mellowed by age. It spoke soothingly; it 
encouraged her; it led her on by apposite questions that 
seemed to be suggested by a great and tender interest, and 
acted like magnetism in attracting the girl’s confidence to 
this unseen friend. The priest’s share in the interview, 
indeed, resembled that of one who removes the stones, 
clustered branches, or whatever entanglements impede the 
current of a swollen stream. Hilda could have imagined — 
so much to the purpose were his inquiries — that he was 
already acquainted with some outline of what she strove 
to tell him. 

Thus assisted, she revealed the whole of her terrible 
secret! The whole, except that no name escaped her lips. 

And, ah, what a relief! When the hysteric gasp, the 
strife between words and sobs, had subsided, what a torture 
had passed away from her soul! It was all gone; her 

S62. 


THE WORLD’S CATHEDRAL 

bosom was as pure now as in her childhood. She was a 
girl again; she was Hilda of the dove-cote; not that doubt- 
ful creature whom her own doves had hardly recognized 
as their mistress and playmate, by reason of the death- 
scent that clung to her garments ! 

After she had ceased to speak, Hilda heard the priest 
bestir himself with an old man’s reluctant movement. He 
stepped out of the confessional; and as the girl was still 
kneeling in the penitential corner, he summoned her forth. 

“Stand up, my daughter,” said the mild voice of the 
confessor; “what we have further to say must be spoken 
face to face.” 

Hilda did his bidding, and stood before him with a 
downcast visage, which flushed and grew pale again. But 
it had the wonderful beauty which we may often observe 
in those who have recently gone through a great struggle, 
and won the peace that lies just on the other side. We see 
it in a new mother’s face; we see it in the faces of the 
dead; and in Hilda’s countenance — which had always a 
rare natural charm for her friends — this glory of peace 
made her as lovely as an angel. 

On her part, Hilda beheld a venerable figure with hair 
as white as snow, and a face strikingly characterized by 
benevolence. It bore marks of thought, however, and pene- 
trative insight; although the keen glances of the eyes were 
now somewhat bedimmed with tears, which the aged shed, 
or almost shed, on lighter stress of emotion than would 
elicit them from younger men. 

“It has not escaped my observation, daughter,” said the 
priest, “that this is your first acquaintance with the confes- 
sional. How is this?” 

“Father,” replied Hilda, raising her eyes, and again 
letting them fall, “I am of New England birth, and was 
bred as what you call a heretic.” 

S63 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


“From New England!” exclaimed the priest. “It was 
my own birthplace, likewise; nor have fifty years of ab- 
sence made me cease to love it. But, a heretic! And are 
you reconciled to the Church.^” 

“Never, father,” said Hilda. 

“And, that being the case,” demanded the old man, “on 
what ground, my daughter, have you sought to avail your- 
self of these blessed privileges, confined exclusively to 
members of the one true Church, of confession and absolu- 
tion ?” 

“Absolution, father?” exclaimed Hilda, shrinking back. 
“Oh no, no ! I never dreamed of that ! Only our Heavenly 
Father can forgive my sins; and it is only by sincere 
repentance of whatever wrong I may have done, and by 
my own best efforts towards a higher life, that I can hope 
for his forgiveness! God forbid that I should ask absolu- 
tion from mortal man!” 

“Then, wherefore,” rejoined the priest, with somewhat 
less mildness in his tone, — “wherefore, I ask again, have 
you taken possession, as I may term it, of this holy ordi- 
nance; being a heretic, and neither seeking to share, nor 
having faith in, the unspeakable advantages which the 
Church offers to its penitents?” 

“Father,” answered Hilda, trying to tell the old man the 
simple truth, “I am a motherless girl, and a stranger here 
in Italy. I had only God to take care of me, and be my 
closest friend; and the terrible, terrible crime, which I have 
revealed to you, thrust itself between Him and me ; so that 
I groped for Him in the darkness, as it were, and found 
him not, — found nothing but a dreadful solitude, and this 
crime in the midst of it! I could not bear it. It seemed 
as if I made the awful guilt my own, by keeping it hidden 
in my heart. I grew a fearful thing to myself. I was 
going mad!” 


S64 


THE WORLD’S CATHEDRAL 


“It was a grievous trial, my poor child!” observed the 
confessor. “Your relief, I trust, will prove to be greater 
than you yet know!” 

“I feel already how immense it is!” said Hilda, ]poking 
gratefully in his face. “Surely, father, it was the hand 
of Providence that led me hither, and made me feel that 
this vast temple of Christianity, this great home of religion, 
must needs contain some cure, some ease, at least, for my 
unutterable anguish. And it has proved so. I have told 
the hideous secret; told it under the sacred seal of the 
confessional; and now it will burn my poor heart no more!” 

“But, daughter,” answered the venerable priest, not un- 
moved by what Hilda said, “you forget! you mistake! — 
you claim a privilege to which you have not entitled your- 
self ! The seal of the confessional, do you say? God for- 
bid that it should ever be broken where it has been fairly 
impressed; but it applies only to matters that have been 
confided to its keeping in a certain prescribed method, and 
by persons, moreover, who have faith in the sanctity of 
the ordinance. I hold myself, and any learned casuist 
of the Church would hold me, as free to disclose all the 
particulars of what -you term your confession, as if they 
had come to my knowledge in a secular way.” 

“This is not right, father!” said Hilda, fixing her eyes 
on the old man’s. 

“Do you not see, child,” he rejoined, with some little 
heat, “with all your nicety of conscience, cannot you recog- 
nize it as my duty to make the story known to the proper 
authorities; a great crime against public justice being in- 
volved, and further evil consequences likely to ensue?” 

“No, father, no!” answered Hilda, courageously, her 
cheeks flushing and her eyes brightening as she spoke. 
“Trust a girl’s simple heart sooner than any casuist of your 
Church, however learned he may be. Trust your own heart, 

S65 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


too! I came to your confessional, father, as I devoutly be- 
lieve, by the direct impulse of Heaven, which also brought 
you hither to-day, in its mercy and love, to relieve me of a 
tortur^ that I could no longer bear. I trusted in the 
pledge which your Church has always held sacred between 
the priest and the human soul, which, through his medium, 
is struggling towards its Father above. What I have con- 
fided to you lies sacredly between God and yourself. Let 
it rest there, father; for this is right, and if you do other- 
wise, you will perpetrate a great wrong, both as a priest 
and a man ! And, believe me, no question, no torture, shall 
ever force my lips to utter what would be necessary, in 
order to make my confession available towards the punish- 
ment of the guilty ones. Leave Providence to deal with 
them !” 

“My quiet little countrywoman,” said the priest, with 
half a smile on his kindly old face, “you can pluck up a 
spirit, I perceive, when you fancy an occasion for one.” 

“I have spirit only to do what I think right,” replied 
Hilda, simply. “In other respects I am timorous.” 

“But you confuse yourself between right feelings and 
very foolish inferences,” continued the priest, “as is the 
wont of women, — so much I have learnt by long experi- 
ence in the confessional, — ^be they young or old. However, 
to set your heart at rest, there is no probable need for me 
to reveal the matter. What you have told, if I mistake not, 
and perhaps more, is already known in the quarter which it 
most concerns.” 

“Known!” exclaimed Hilda. “Known to the authorities 
of Rome! And what will be the consequence?” 

“Hush,” answered the confessor, laying his finger on his 
lips. “I tell you my supposition — mind, it is no assertion 
of the fact — in order that you may go the more cheerfully 
on your way, not deeming yourself burdened with any 

S66 


THE WORLD’S CATHEDRAL 


responsibility as concerns this dark deed. And now, daugh- 
ter, what have you to give in return for an old man’s 
kindness and sympathy.^” 

“My grateful remembrance,” said Hilda, fervently, “as 
long as I live!” 

“And nothing more.^” the priest inquired, with a per- 
suasive smile. “Will you not reward him with a great 
joy; one of the last joys that he may know on earth, and 
a fit one to take with him into the better world ? In a word, 
will you not allow me to bring you, as a stray lamb into 
the true fold.^ You have experienced some little taste of 
the relief and comfort which the Church keeps abun- 
dantly in store for all its faithful children. Come home, 
dear child, — poor wanderer, who hast caught a glimpse 
of the heavenly light, — come home, and be at rest.” 

“Father,” said Hilda, much moved by his kindly earnest- 
ness; in which, however, genuine as it was, there might 
still be a leaven of professional craft, “I dare not come 
a step farther than Providence shall guide me. Do not 
let it grieve you, therefore, if I never return to the con- 
fessional; never dip my fingers in holy water; never sign 
my bosom with the cross. I am a daughter of the Puritans. 
But, in spite of my heresy,” she added with a sweet, tear- 
ful smile, “you may one day see the poor girl, to whom 
you have done this great Christian kindness, coming to 
remind you of it, and thank you for it, in the Better Land.” 

The old priest shook his head. But, as he stretched out 
his hands at the same moment, in the act of benediction, 
Hilda knelt down and received the blessing with as devout 
a simplicity as any Catholic of them all. 


867 


CHAPTER XL 
Hilda and a Friend 

When Hilda knelt to receive the priest’s benediction, 
the act was witnessed by a person who stood leaning against 
the marble balustrade that surrounds the hundred golden 
lights, before the high altar. He had stood there, indeed,, 
from the moment of the girl’s entrance into the confession- 
al. His start of surprise, at first beholding her, and the 
anxious gloom that afterwards settled on his face, suffi- 
ciently betokened that he felt a deep and sad interest in 
what was going forward. 

After Hilda had bidden the priest farewell, she came 
slowly towards the high altar. The individual, to whom 
we have alluded, seemed irresolute whether to advance or 
retire. His hesitation lasted so long, that the maiden, 
straying through a happy reverie, had crossed the wide 
extent of the pavement between the confessional and the 
altar, before he had decided whether to meet her. At last, 
when within a pace or two, she raised her eyes and recog- 
nized Kenyon. 

“It is you!” she exclaimed, with joyful surprise. “I 
am so happy.” 

In truth, the sculptor had never before seen, nor hardly 
imagined, such a figure of peaceful beatitude as Hilda now 
presented. While coming towards him in the solemn radi- 
ance which, at that period of the day, is diffused through 
the transept, and showered down beneath the dome, she 
seemed of the same substance as the atmosphere that en- 

368 


HILDA AND A FRIEND 


veloped her. He could scarcely tell whether she was 
imbued with sunshine^ or whether it was a glow of happi- 
ness that shone out of her. 

At all events, it was a marvellous change from the sad 
girl, who had entered the confessional bewildered with an- 
guish, to this bright, yet softened image of religious conso- 
lation that emerged from it. It was as if one of the throng 
of angelic people, who might be hovering in the sunny 
depths of the dome, had alighted on the pavement. Indeed, 
this capability of transfiguration, which we often see 
wrought by inward delight on persons far less capable of 
it than Hilda, suggests how angels come by their beauty. 
It grows out of their happiness, and lasts forever only be- 
cause that is immortal. 

She held out her hand, and Kenyon was glad to take 
it in his own, if only to assure himself that she was made 
of earthly material. 

“Yes, Hilda, I see that you are very happy,"* he replied, 
gloomily, and withdrawing his hand after a single pressure. 
“For me, I never was less so than at this moment.” 

“Has any misfortune befallen you?” asked Hilda, with 
earnestness. “Pray tell me, and you shall have my sym- 
pathy, though I must still be very happy. Now, I know how 
it is, that the saints above are touched by the sorrows of dis- 
tressed people on earth, and yet are never made wretched 
by them. Not that I profess to be a saint, you know,” she 
added, smiling radiantly. “But the heart grows so large, 
and so rich, and so variously endowed, when it has a great 
sense of bliss, that it can give smiles to some, and tears 
to others, with equal sincerity, and enjoy its own peace 
throughout all.’" 

“Do not say you are no saint!” answered Kenyon, with 
a smile, though he felt that the tears stood in his eyes. 

369 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


“You will still be Saint Hilda^ whatever church may canon- 
ize you.” 

“Ah! you would not have said so, had you seen me but 
an hour ago!” murmured she. “I was so wretched, that 
there seemed a grievous sin in it.” 

“And what has made you so suddenly happy?” inquired 
the sculptor. “But first, Hilda, will you not tell me why 
you were so wretched?” 

“Had I met you yesterday, I might have told you that,” 
she replied. “To-day, there is no need.” 

“Your happiness, then?” said the sculptor, as sadly as 
before. “Whence comes it?” 

“A great burden has been lifted from my heart, — from 
my conscience, I had almost said,” — answered Hilda, with- 
out shunning the glance that he fixed upon her. “I am 
a new creature, since this morning. Heaven be praised for 
it ! It was a blessed hour — a blessed impulse — ^that 
brought me to this beautiful and glorious cathedral. I 
shall hold it in loving remembrance while I live, as the spot 
where I found infinite peace after infinite trouble.” 

Her heart seemed so full, that it spilt its new gush of 
happiness, as it were, like rich and sunny wine out of an 
over-brimming goblet. Kenyon saw that she was in one 
of those moods of elevated feeling, when the soul is 
upheld by a strange tranquillity, which is really more 
passionate, and less controllable, than emotions far exceed- 
ing it in violence. He felt that there would be indelicacy, 
if he ought not rather to call it impiety, in his stealing 
upon Hilda, while she was thus beyond her own guardian- 
ship, and surprising her out of secrets which she might 
afterwards bitterly regret betraying to him. Therefore, 
though yearning to know what had happened, he resolved 
to forbear further question. 

Simple and earnest people, however, being accustomed 
870 


HILDA AND A FRIEND 

to speak from their genuine impulses^ cannot easily, as 
craftier men do, avoid the subject which they have at 
heart. As often as the sculptor unclosed his lips, such 
words as these were ready to burst out: — 

“Hilda, have you flung your angelic purity into that 
mass of unspeakable corruption, the Roman Church?” 

“What were you saying?” she asked, as Kenyon forced 
back an almost uttered exclamation of this kind. 

“I was thinking of what you have just remarked about 
the cathedral,” said he, looking up into the mighty hollow 
of the dome. “It is indeed a magnificent structure, and an 
adequate expression of the Faith which built it. When I 
behold it in a proper mood, — ^that is to say, when I bring 
my mind into a fair relation with the minds and purposes 
of its spiritual and material architects, — I see but one or 
two criticisms to make. One is, that it needs painted 
windows.” 

“Oh, no !” said Hilda. “They would be quite inconsis- 
tent with so much richness of color in the interior of the 
church. Besides, it is a Gothic ornament, and only suited 
to that style of architecture, which requires a gorgeous 
dimness.” 

“Nevertheless,” continued the sculptor, “yonder square 
apertures, filled with ordinary panes of glass, are quite 
out of keeping with the superabundant splendor of every- 
thing about them. They remind me of that portion of 
Aladdin’s palace which he left unfinished, in order that his 
royal father-in-law might put the finishing touch. Day- 
light, in its natural state, ought not to be admitted here. 
It should stream through a brilliant illusion of saints and 
hierarchies, and old scriptural images, and symbolized dog- 
mas, purple, blue, golden, and a broad flame of scarlet. 
Then, it would be just such an illumination as the Catho- 

371 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


lie faith allows to its believers. But, give me — to live and 
die in — the pure white light of heaven!’" 

“Why do you look so sorrowfully at me.^” asked Hilda, 
quietly meeting his disturbed gaze. “What would you say 
to me.^ I love the white light tool” 

“I fancied so,” answered Kenyon. “Forgive me, Hilda; 
but I must needs speak. You seemed to me a rare mixture 
of impressibility, sympathy, sensitiveness to many in- 
fluences, with a certain quality of common sense; — no, not 
that, but a higher and finer attribute, for which I find no 
better word. However tremulously you might vibrate, this 
quality, I supposed, would always bring you back to the 
equipoise. You were a creature of imagination, and yet 
as truly a New England girl as any with whom you grew 
up in your native village. If there were one person in the 
world whose native rectitude of thought, and something 
deeper, more reliable, than thought, I would have trusted 
against all the arts of a priesthood, — whose taste alone, so 
exquisite and sincere that it rose to be a moral virtue, I 
would have rested upon as a sufficient safeguard, — ^it was 
yourself !” 

“I am conscious of no such high and . delicate qualities 
as you allow me,” answered Hilda. “But what have I 
done that a girl of New England birth and culture, with 
the right sense that her mother taught her, and the con- 
science that she developed in her, should not do?” 

“Hilda, I saw you at the confessional!” said Kenyon. 

“Ah, well, my dear friend,” replied Hilda casting down 
her eyes, and looking somewhat confused, yet not ashamed, 
“you must try to forgive me for that, — if you deem it 
wrong, — because it has saved my reason, and made me very 
happy. Had you been here yesterday, I would have con- 
fessed to you.” 

“Would to Heaven I had!” ejaculated Kenyon. 

372 


HILDA AND A FRIEND 


“I thinkj’' Hilda resumed, “I shall never go to the con- 
fessional again; for there can scarcely come such a sore 
trial twice in my life. If I had been a wiser girl, a stronger, 
and a more sensible, very likely I might not have gone 
to the confessional at all. It was the sin of others that 
drove me thither; not my own, though it almost seemed so. 
Being what I am, I must either have done what you saw 
me doing, or have gone mad. Would that have been 
better.^” 

“Then you are not a Catholic?” asked the sculptor, 
earnestly. 

“Really, I do not quite know what I am,” replied Hilda, 
encountering his eyes with a frank and simple gaze. “I 
have a great deal of faith, and Catholicism seems to have 
a great deal of good. Why should not I be a Catholic, if I 
find there what I need, and what I cannot find elsewhere? 
The more I see of this worship, the more I wonder at the 
exuberance with which it adapts itself to all the demands 
of human infirmity. If its ministers were but a little more 
than human, above all error, pure from all iniquity, what a 
religion would it be!” 

“I need not fear your conversion to the Catholic faith,” 
remarked Kenyon, “if you are at all aware of the bitter 
sarcasm implied in your last observation. It is very just. 
Only the exceeding ingenuity of the system stamps it as 
the contrivance of man, or some worse author; not an 
emanation of the broad and simple wisdom from on high.” 

“It may be so,” said Hilda ; “but I meant no sarcasm.” 

Thus conversing, the two friends went together down the 
grand extent of the nave. Before leaving the church, they 
turned to admire again its mighty breadth, the remoteness 
of the glory behind the altar, and the effect of visionary 
splendor and magnificence imparted by the long bars of 

373 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

smoky sunshine, which travelled so far before arriving at 
a place of rest. 

“Thank Heaven for having brought me hither I” said 
Hilda, fervently. 

Kenyon’s mind was deeply disturbed by his idea of her 
Catholic propensities; and now what he deemed her dis- 
proportionate and misapplied veneration for the sublime 
edifice stung him into irreverence. 

“The best thing I know of St. Peter’s,” observed he, “is 
its equable temperature. We are now enjoying the cool- 
ness of last winter, which, a few months hence, will be the 
warmth of the present summer. It has no cure, I suspect, 
in all its length and breadth, for a sick soul, but it would 
make an admirable atmospheric hospital for sick bodies. 
What a delightful shelter would it be for the invalids who 
throng to Rome, where the sirocco steals away their 
strength, and the tramontana stabs them through and 
through, like cold steel with a poisoned point! But within 
these walls, the thermometer never varies. Winter and 
summer are married at the high altar, and dwell together 
in perfect harmony.” 

“Yes,” said Hilda; “and I have always felt this soft, 
unchanging climate of St. Peter’s to be another manifesta- 
tion of its sanctity.” 

“That is not precisely my idea,” replied Kenyon. “But 
what a delicious life it would be, if a colony of people with 
delicate lungs — or merely with delicate fancies — could take 
up their abode in this ever-mild and tranquil air. These 
architectural tombs of the popes might serve for dwellings, 
and each brazen sepulchral doorway would become a do- 
mestic threshold. Then the lover, if he dared, might say 
to his mistress, ‘Will you share my tomb with me.^’ and, 
winning her soft consent, he would lead her to the altar, and 
thence to yonder sepulchre of Pope Gregory, which should 

374 


HILDA AND A FRIEND 


be their nuptial home. What a life would be theirs, Hilda, 
in their marble Eden!’^ 

“It is not kind, nor like yourself,’" said Hilda, gently, 
“to throw ridicule on emotions which are genuine. I revere 
this glorious church for itself and its purposes; and love 
it, moreover, because here I have found sweet peace, after 
a great anguish.” 

“Forgive me,” answered the sculptor, “and I will do so 
no more. My heart is not so irreverent as my words.” 

They went through the piazza of St. Peter’s and the 
adjacent streets, silently at first; but, before reaching the 
bridge of St. Angelo, Hilda’s flow of spirits began to bubble 
forth, like the gush of a streamlet that has been shut up 
by frost, or by a heavy stone over its source. Kenyon had 
never found her so delightful as now; so softened out of the 
chillness of her virgin pride; so full of fresh thoughts, at 
which he was often moved to smile, although, on turning 
them over a little more, he sometimes discovered that they 
looked fanciful only because so absolutely true. 

But, indeed, she was not quite in a normal state. Emerg- 
ing from gloom into sudden cheerfulness, the effect upon 
Hilda was as if she were just now created. After long 
torpor, receiving back her intellectual activity, she derived 
an exquisite pleasure from the use of her faculties, which 
were set in motion by causes that seemed inadequate. She 
continually brought to Kenyon’s mind the image of a 
child, making its plaything of every object, but sporting 
in good faith, and with a kind of seriousness. Looking up, 
for example, at the statue of St. Michael, on the top of 
Hadrian’s castellated tomb, Hilda fancied an interview be- 
tween the Archangel and the old emperor’s ghost, who was 
naturally displeased at finding his mausoleum, which he 
had ordained for the stately and solemn repose of his 
ashes, converted to its present purposes. 

S75 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


“But St. Michael, no doubt/’ she thoughtfully remarked, 
“would finally convince the Emperor Hadrian that where 
a warlike despot is sown as the seed, a fortress and a prison 
are the only possible crop.” 

They stopped on the bridge to look into the swift eddy- 
ing flow of the yellow Tiber, a mud-puddle in strenuous 
motion; and Hilda wondered whether the seven-branched 
golden candlestick, — the holy candlestick of the Jews, — 
which was lost at the Ponte Molle, in Constantine’s time, 
had yet been swept as far down the river as this. 

“It probably stuck where it fell,” said the sculptor; “and, 
by this time, is imbedded thirty feet deep in the mud of 
the Tiber. Nothing will ever bring it to light again.” 

“I fancy you are mistaken,” replied Hilda, smiling. 
“There was a meaning and purpose in each of its seven 
branches, and such a candlestick cannot be lost forever. 
When it is found again, and seven lights are kindled and 
burning in it, the whole world will gain the illumination 
which it needs. Would not this be an admirable idea for 
a mystic story or parable, or seven-branched allegory, full 
of poetry, art, philosophy, and religion? It shall be called 
‘The Recovery of the Sacred Candlestick.’ As each branch 
is lighted, it shall have a differently colored lustre from the 
other six ; and when all the seven are kindled, their radiance 
shall combine into the intense white light of truth.” 

“Positively, Hilda, this is a magnificent conception,” cried 
Kenyon. “The more I look at it, the brighter it burns.” 

“I think so too,” said Hilda, enjoying a childlike pleas- 
ure in her own idea. “The theme is better suited for verse 
than prose; and when I go home to America I will suggest 
it to one of our poets. Or, seven poets might write the 
poem together, each lighting a separate branch of the 
Sacred Candlestick.” 

“Then you think of going home?” Kenyon asked. 

376 


HILDA AND A FRIEND 

“Only yesterday/’ she replied, “I longed to flee away. 
Now, all is changed, and, being happy again, I should feel 
deep regret at leaving the Pictorial Land. But, I cannot 
tell. In Rome, there is something dreary and awful, which 
we can never quite escape. At least, I thought so yester- 
day.” 

When they reached the Via Porto ghese, and approached 
Hilda’s tower, the doves, who were waiting aloft, flung 
themselves upon the air, and came floating down about her 
head. The girl caressed them, and responded to their coo- 
ings with similar sounds from her own lips, and with words 
of endearment; and their joyful flutterings and airy little 
flights, evidently impelled by pure exuberance of spirits, 
seemed to show that the doves had a real sympathy with 
their mistress’s state of mind. For peace had descended 
upon her like a dove. 

Bidding the sculptor farewell, Hilda climbed her tower, 
and came forth upon its summit to trim the Virgin’s lamp. 
The doves, well knowing her custom, had flown up thither 
to meet her, and again hovered about her head; and very 
lovely was her aspect, in the evening sunlight, which had 
little further to do with the world, just then, save to fling 
a golden glory on Hilda’s hair, and vanish. 

Turning her eyes down into the dusky street which she 
had just quitted, Hilda saw the sculptor still there, and 
waved her hand to him. 

“How sad and dim he looks, down there in that dreary 
street!” she said to herself. “Something weighs upon his 
spirits. Would I could comfort him!” 

“How like a spirit she looks, aloft there, with the even- 
ing glory round her head, and those winged creatures claim- 
ing her as akin to them !” thought Kenyon, on his part. 
“How far above me ! how unattainable ! Ah, if I could lift 

377 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


myself to her region ! Or^ — if it be not a sin to wish it^ — 
would that I might draw her down to an earthly fireside!’* 

What a sweet reverence is that, when a young man deems 
his mistress a little more than mortal^ and almost chides 
himself for longing to bring her close to his heart! A 
trifling circumstance, but such as lovers make much of, 
gave him hope. One of the doves, which had been resting 
on Hilda’s shoulder, suddenly flew downward, as if recog- 
nizing him as its mistress’s dear friend; and, perhaps com- 
missioned with an errand of regard, brushed his upturned 
face with its wings, and again soared aloft. 

The sculptor watched the bird’s return, and saw Hilda 
greet it with a smile. 


378 


CHAPTER XLI 


Snow-drops and Maidenly Delights 

It being still considerably earlier than the period at 
which artists and tourists are accustomed to assemble in 
Rome, the sculptor and Hilda found themselves compara- 
tively alone there. The dense mass of native Roman life, 
in the midst of which they were, served to press them near 
one another. It was as if they had been thrown together 
on a desert island. Or, they seemed to have wandered, by 
some strange chance, out of the common world, and en- 
countered each other in a depopulated city, where there 
were streets of lonely palaces, and unreckonable treasures 
of beautiful and admirable things, of which they two be- 
came the sole inheritors. 

In such circumstances, Hilda’s gentle reserve must have 
been stronger than her kindly disposition permitted, if the 
friendship between Kenyon and herself had not grown as 
warm as a maiden’s friendship can ever be, without abso- 
lutely and avowedly blooming into love. On the sculptor’s 
side, the amaranthine flower was already in full blow. But 
it is very beautiful, though the lover’s heart may grow chill 
at the perception, to see how the snow will sometimes linger 
in a virgin’s breast, even after the spring is well advanced. 
In such alpine soils, the summer will not be anticipated; 
we seek vainly for passionate flowers, and blossoms of 
fervid hue and spicy fragrance, finding only snow-drops 
and sunless violets, when it is almost the full season for 
the crimson rose. 


S19 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


With so much tenderness as Hilda had in her nature^ it 
was strange that she so reluctantly admitted the idea of 
love; espeeially, as^ in the sculptor, she found both con- 
geniality and variety of taste, and likenesses and differ- 
ences of eharacter; these being as essential as those to any 
poignancy of mutual emotion. 

So Hilda, as far as Kenyon could discern, still did not 
love him, though she admitted him within the quiet circle 
of her affections as a dear friend and trusty counsellor. If 
we knew what is best for us, or could be content with what 
is reasonably good, the sculptor might well have been sat- 
isfied, for a season, with this ealm intimaey, which so sweet- 
ly kept him a stranger in her heart, and a ceremonious 
guest; and yet allowed him the free enjoyment of all but 
its deeper recesses. The flowers that grow outside of those 
minor sanctities have a wild, hasty charm, which it is well 
to prove; there may be sweeter ones within the sacred pre- 
cinct, but none that will die while you are handling them, 
and bequeath you a delieious legacy, as these do, in the 
perception of their evanescence and unreality. 

And this may be the reason, after all, why Hilda, like so 
many other maidens, lingered on the hither side of passion; 
her finer instinct and keener sensibility made her enjoy 
those pale delights in a degree of which men are incapable. 
She hesitated to grasp a richer happiness, as possessing al- 
ready such measure of it as her heart eould hold, and of a 
quality most agreeable to her virgin tastes. 

Certainly, they both were very happy. Kenyon’s genius, 
unconscioualy wrought upon by Hilda’s influence, took a 
more delicate eharacter than heretofore. He modelled, 
among other things, a beautiful little statue of maidenhood 
gathering a snow-drop. It was never put into marble, 
however, because the sculptor soon recognized it as one of 
those fragile creations which are true only to the moment 

380 


SNOW-DROPS AND MAIDENLY DELIGHTS 


that produces them^ and are wronged if we try to im- 
prison their airy excellenee in a permanent material. 

On her part^ Hilda returned to her customary occupa- 
tions with a fresh love for them^ and yet with a deeper look 
into the heart of things; such as those necessarily acquire 
who have passed from picture galleries into dungeon 
gloom^ and thence come back to the picture gallery again. 
It is questionable whether she was ever so perfect a copyist 
thenceforth. She could not yield herself up to the painter 
so unreservedly as in times past; her character had de- 
veloped a sturdier quality, which made her less pliable to 
the influence of other minds. She saw into the picture as 
profoundly as ever, and perhaps more so, but not with the 
devout sympathy that had formerly given her entire posses- 
sion of the old master’s idea. She had known such a reality, 
that it taught her to distinguish inevitably the large por- 
tion that is unreal, in every work of art. Instructed by 
sorrow, she felt that there is something beyond almost all 
which pictorial genius has produced; and she never forgot 
those sad wanderings from gallery to gallery, and from 
church to church, where she had vainly sought a type of the 
Virgin Mother, or the Saviour, or saint, or martyr, which a 
soul in extreme need might recognize as the adequate one. 

How, indeed, should she have found such? How could 
holiness be revealed to the artist of an age when the great- 
est of them put genius and imagination in the place of 
spiritual insight, and when, from the pope downward, all 
Christendom was corrupt? 

Meanwhile, months wore away, and Rome received back 
that large portion of its life-blood which runs in the veins 
of its foreign and temporary population. English visitors 
established themselves in the hotels, and in all the sunny 
suites of apartments, in the streets convenient to the Piazza 
di Spagna; the English tongue was heard familiarly along 

381 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


the Corso^ and English children sported in the Pincian 
Gardens. 

The native Romans, on the other hand, like the butter- 
flies and grasshoppers, resigned themselves to the short, 
sharp misery w^hich winter brings to a people whose ar- 
rangements are made almost exclusively with a view to sum- 
mer. Keeping no fire within-doors, except possibly a spark 
or two in the kitchen, they crept out of their cheerless 
houses into the narrow, sunless, sepulchral streets, bringing 
their firesides along with them, in the shape of little earthen 
pots, vases, or pipkins, full of lighted charcoal and warm 
ashes, over which they held their tingling finger-ends. 
Even in this half-torpid wretchedness, they still seemed to 
dread a pestilence in the sunshine, and kept on the shady 
side of the piazzas, as scrupulously as in summer. Through 
the open doorways — no need to shut them when the 
weather within was bleaker than without — a glimpse into 
the interior of their dwellings showed the imcarpeted brick 
floors, as dismal as the pavement of a tomb. 

They drew their old cloaks about them, nevertheless, and 
threw the corners over their shoulders, with the dignity of 
attitude and action that have come down to these modern 
citizens, as their sole inheritance from the togated nation. 
Somehow or other, they managed to keep up their poor, 
frost-bitten hearts against the pitiless atmosphere with a 
quiet and uncomplaining endurance that really seems the 
most respectable point in the present Roman character. 
For, in New England, or in Russia, or scarcely in a hut of 
the Esquimaux, there is no such discomfort to be borne as 
by Romans in wintry weather, when the orange-trees bear 
icy fruit in the gardens; and when the rims of all the foun- 
tains are shaggy with icicles, and the Fountain of Trevi 
skimmed almost across with a glassy surface; and when 
there is a slide in the piazza of St. Peter’s, and a fringe of 

382 


SNOW-DROPS AND MAIDENLY DELIGHTS 


brown, frozen foam along the eastern shore of the Tiber, 
and sometimes a fall of great snow-flakes into the dreary 
lanes and alleys of the miserable city. Cold blasts, that 
bring death with them, now blow upon the shivering in- 
valids, who came hither in the hope of breathing balmy airs. 

Wherever we pass our summers, may all our inclement 
months, from November to April, henceforth be spent in 
some country that recognizes winter as an integral portion 
of its year! 

Now, too, there was especial discomfort in the stately 
picture galleries, where nobody, indeed, — ^not the princely 
or priestly founders, nor any who have inherited their 
cheerless magnificence, — ever dreamed of such an impos- 
sibility as fireside warmth, since those great palaces were 
built. Hilda, therefore, finding her fingers so much be- 
numbed that the spiritual influence could not be transmitted 
to them, was persuaded to leave her easel before a picture, 
on one of these wintry days, and pay a visit to Kenyon’s 
studio. But neither was the studio anything better than a 
dismal den, with its marble shapes shivering around the 
walls, cold as the snow-images which the sculptor used to 
model in his boyhood, and sadly behold them weep them- 
selves away at the first thaw. 

Kenyon’s Roman artisans, all this while, had been at 
work on the Cleopatra. The fierce Egyptian queen had 
now struggled almost out of the imprisoning stone; or, 
rather, the workmen had found her within the mass of 
marble, imprisoned there by magic, but still fervid to the 
touch with fiery life, the fossil woman of an age that pro- 
duced statelier, stronger, and more passionate creatures 
than our own. You already felt her compressed heat, and 
were aware of a tiger-like character even in her repose. If 
Octavius should make his appearance, though the marble 
still held her within its embrace, it was evident that she 

383 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


would tear herself forth in a twinkling, either to spring 
enraged at his throat, or, sinking into his arms, to make one 
more proof of her rich blandishments, or, falling lowly at 
his feet, to try the efficacy of a woman’s tears. 

“I am ashamed to tell you how much I admire this 
statue,” said Hilda. “No other sculptor could have done 
it.” 

“This is very sweet for me to hear,” replied Kenyon; 
“and since your reserve keeps you from saying more, I 
shall imagine you expressing everything that an artist 
would wish to hear said about his work.” 

“You will not easily go beyond my genuine opinion,” 
answered Hilda, with a smile. 

“Ah, your kind word makes me very happy,” said the 
sculptor, “and I need it, just now, on behalf of my Cleo- 
patra. That inevitable period has come, — for I have found 
it inevitable, in regard to all my works, — when I look at 
what I fancied to be a statue, lacking only breath to make 
it live, and find it a mere lump of senseless stone, into which 
I have not really succeeded in moulding the spiritual part 
of my idea. I should like, now, — only it would be such 
shameful treatment for a discrowned queen, and my own 
offspring too, — I should like to hit poor Cleopatra a bitter 
blow on her Egyptian nose with this mallet.” 

“That is a blow which all statues seem doomed to re- 
ceive, sooner or later, though seldom from the hand that 
sculptured them,” said Hilda, laughing. “But you must 
not let yourself be too much disheartened by the decay of 
your faith in what you produce. I have heard a poet ex- 
press similar distaste for his own most exquisite poem, and 
I am afraid that this final despair, and sense of short-com- 
ing, must always be the reward and punishment of those 
who try to grapple with a great or beautiful idea. It only 
proves that you have been able to imagine things too high 

384 


SNOW DROPS AND MAIDENLY DELIGHTS 

for mortal faculties to execute. The idea leaves you an 
imperfect image of itself^ which you at first mistake for the 
ethereal reality^ but soon find that the latter has escaped out 
of your closest embrace.” 

“And the only consolation is,” remarked Kenyon, “that 
the blurred and imperfect image may still make a very re- 
spectable appearance in the eyes of those who have not seen 
the original.” 

“More than that,” rejoined Hilda; “for there is a class 
of spectators whose sympathy will help them to see the 
perfect through a mist of imperfection. Nobody, I think, 
ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who 
cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or art- 
ist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is sug- 
gestiveness.” 

“You, Hilda, are yourself the only critic in whom I have 
much faith,” said Kenyon. “Had you condemned Cleo- 
patra, nothing should have saved her.” 

“You invest me with such an awful responsibility,” she 
replied, “that I shall not dare to say a single word about 
your other works.” 

“At least,” said the sculptor, “tell me whether you 
recognize this bust?” 

He pointed to a bust of Donatello. It was not the one 
which Kenyon had begun to model at Monte Beni, but a 
reminiscence of the Count’s face, wrought under the in- 
fluence of all the sculptor’s knowledge of his history, and 
of his personal and hereditary character. It stood on a 
wooden pedestal, not nearly finished, but with fine white 
dust and small chips of marble scattered about it, and itself 
incrusted all round with the white, shapeless substance of 
the block. In the midst appeared the features, lacking 
sharpness, and very much resembling a fossil countenance, 
— ^but we have already used this simile, in reference to 

385 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI j 

Cleopatra^ — ^with the accumulations of long-past ages j 
clinging to it. 

And yet, strange to say, the face had an expression, and i 
a more recognizable one than Kenyon had succeeded in i 
putting into the clay model at Monte Beni. The reader is 
probably acquainted with Thorwaldsen’s three-fold analogy, 

• — the clay model, the Life; the plaster cast, the Death; 
and the sculptured marble, the Resurrection, — and it 
seemed to be made good by the spirit that was kindling up 
these imperfect features, .like a lambent flame. 

“I was not quite sure, at first glance, that I knew the 
face,” observed Hilda; “the likeness surely is not a striking 
one. There is a good deal of external resemblance, still, 
to the features of the Faun of Praxiteles, between whom , 
and Donatello, you know, we once insisted that there was ' 
a perfect twin-brotherhood. But the expression is now so 
very different!” 

“What do you take it to be?” asked the sculptor. 

“I hardly know how to define it,” she answered. “But ^ 
it has an eff’ect as if I could see this countenance gradually 
brightening while I look at it. It gives the impression of 
a growing intellectual power and moral sense. Donatello’s - 
face used to evince little more than a genial, pleasurable 
sort of vivacity, and capability of enjoyment. But, here, 
a soul is being breathed into him; it is the Faun, but 
advancing towards a state of higher development.” 

“Hilda, do you see all this ?” exclaimed Kenyon, in con- - 
siderable surprise. “I may have had such an idea in my 
mind, but was quite unaware that I had succeeded in con- 
veying it into the marble.” 

“Forgive me,” said Hilda, “but I question whether this ' 
striking effect has been brought about by any skill or pur- , 
pose on the sculptor’s part. Is it not, perhaps, the chance ] 
result of the bust being just so far shaped out, in the «; 

386 J 

J 

' -j 


SNOW-DROPS AND MAIDENLY DELIGHTS 


marble, as the process of moral growth had advanced in the 
original? A few more strokes of the chisel might change 
the whole expression, and so spoil it for what it is now 
worth.” 

“I believe you are right,” answered Kenyon, thought- 
fully examining his work; “and, strangely enough, it was 
the very expression that I tried unsuccessfully to produce 
in the clay model. Well; not another chip shall be struck 
from the marble.” 

And, accordingly, Donatello’s bust (like that rude, rough 
mass of the head of Brutus, by Michael Angelo, at Flor- 
ence) has ever since remained in an unfinished state. Most 
spectators mistake it for an unsuccessful attempt towards 
copying the features of the Faun of Praxiteles. One ob- 
server in a thousand is conscious of something more, and 
lingers long over this mysterious face, departing from it 
reluctantly, and with many a glance thrown backward. 
What perplexes him is the riddle that he sees propounded 
there; the riddle of the soul’s growth, taking its first im- 
pulse amid remorse and pain, and struggling through the 
incrustations of the senses. It was the contemplation of 
this imperfect portrait of Donatello that originally inter- 
ested us in his history, and impelled us to elicit from Ken- 
yon what he knew of his friend’s adventures. 


387 


CHAPTER XLII 

Reminiscences of Miriam 

When Hilda and himself turned away from the un- 
finished bust^ the sculptor’s mind still dwelt upon the 
reminiscences which it suggested. 

“You have not seen Donatello recently,” he remarked, 
“and therefore cannot be aware how sadly he is changed.” 

“No wonder!” exclaimed Hilda, growing pale. 

The terrible scene which she had witnessed, when 
Dontallo’s face gleamed out in so fierce a light, came back 
upon her memory, almost for the first time since she knelt 
at the confessional. Hilda, as is sometimes the case with 
persons whose delicate organization requires a peculiar 
safeguard, had an elastic faculty of throwing off such 
recollections as would be too painful for endurance. The 
first shock of Donatello’s and Miriam’s crime had, indeed, 
broken through the frail defence of this voluntary forget- 
fulness; but, once enabled to relieve herself of the pon- 
derous anguish over which she had so long brooded, she 
had practised a subtile watchfulness in preventing its 
return. 

“No wonder, do you say?” repeated the sculptor, look- 
ing at her with interest, but not exactly with surprise; for 
he had long suspected that Hilda had a painful knowledge 
of events which he himself little more than surmised. 
“Then you know! — you have heard! But what can you 
possibly have heard, and through what channel?” 

“Nothing!” replied Hilda, faintly. “Not one word has 
388 


REMINISCENCES OF MIRIAM 

reached my ears from the lips of any human being. Let 
us never speak of it again! No, no! never again!” 

“And Miriam!” said Kenyon, with irrepressible interest. 
“Is it also forbidden to speak of her?” 

“Hush! do not even utter her name! Try not to think 
of it!” Hilda whispered. “It may bring terrible con- 
sequences !” 

“My dear Hilda!” exclaimed Kenyon, regarding her 
with wonder and deep sympathy. “My sweet friend, have 
you had this secret hidden in your delicate, maidenly heart, 
through all these many months! No wonder that your life 
was withering out of you.” 

“It was so, indeed!” said Hilda, shuddering. “Even 
now, I sicken at the recollection.” 

“And how could it have come to your knowledge?” con- 
tinued the sculptor. “But, no matter ! Do not torture 
yourself with referring to the subject. Only, if at any 
time it should be a relief to you, remember that we can 
speak freely together, for Miriam has herself suggested a 
confidence between us.” 

“Miriam has suggested this!” exclaimed Hilda. “Yes, 
I remember, now, her advising that the secret should be 
shared with you. But I have survived the death-struggle 
that it cost me, and need make no further revelations. And 
Miriam has spoken to you! What manner of woman can 
she be, who, after sharing in such a deed, can make it a 
topic of conversation with her friends?” 

“Ah, Hilda,” replied Kenyon, “you do not know, for 
you could never learn it from your own heart, which is all 
purity and rectitude, what a mixture of good there may be 
in things evil; and how the greatest criminal, if you look 
at his conduct from his own point of view, or from any 
side-point, may seem not so unquestionably guilty, after all. 
So with Miriam; so with Donatello. They are, perhaps, 

389 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


partners in what we must call awful guilt; and yet^ I will 
own to you^ — ^when I think of the original cause^ the mo- 
tives^ the feelings, the sudden concurrence of circumstances 
thrusting them onward, the urgency of the moment, and the 
sublime unselfishness on either part, — I know not well 
how to distinguish it from much that the world calls hero- 
ism. Might we not render some such verdict as this.^ — 
‘Worthy of Death, but not unworthy of Love !’ 

“Never!” answered Hilda, looking at the matter through 
the clear crystal medium of her own integrity. “This thing, 
as regards its causes, is all a mystery to me, and must re- 
main so. But there is, I believe, only one right and one 
wrong; and I do not understand, and may God keep me 
from ever understanding, how two things so totally unlike 
can be mistaken for one another; nor how two mortal foes, 
as Right and Wrong surely are, can work together in the 
same deed. This is my faith; and I should be led astray, 
if you could persuade me to give it up.” 

“Alas for poor human nature, then !” said Kenyon, sadly, 
and yet half smiling at Hilda’s unworldly and impracti- 
cable theory. “I always felt you, my dear friend, a terribly 
severe judge, and have been perplexed to conceive how 
such tender sympathy could coexist with the remorseless- 
ness of a steel blade. You need no mercy, and therefore 
know not how to show any.” 

“That sounds like a bitter gibe,” said Hilda, with the 
tears springing into her eyes. “But I cannot help it. It 
does not alter my perception of the truth. If there be any 
such dreadful mixture of good and evil as you affirm, — and 
which appears to me almost more shocking than pure evil, 
— then the good is turned to poison, not the evil to whole- 
someness.” 

The sculptor seemed disposed to say something more, 
but yielded to the gentle steadfastness with which Hilda 

S90 


REMINISCENCES OF MIRIAM 

declined to listen. She grew very sad; for a reference to 
this one dismal topic had set^ as it were, a prison-door ajar, 
and allowed a throng of torturing recollections to escape 
from their dungeons into the pure air and white radiance of 
her soul. She bade Kenyon a briefer farewell than ordi- 
nary, and went homeward to her tower. 

In spite of her efforts to withdraw them to other sub- 
jects, her thoughts dwelt upon Miriam; and, as had not 
heretofore happened, they brought with them a painful 
doubt whether a wrong had not been committed on Hilda’s 
part, towards the friend once so beloved. Something that 
IMiriam had said, in their final conversation, recurred to 
her memory, and seemed now to deserve more weight than 
Hilda had assigned to it, in her horror at the crime just 
perpetrated. It was not that the deed looked less wicked 
and terrible in the retrospect; but she asked herself 
whether there were not other questions to be considered, 
aside from that single one of Miriam’s guilt or innocence; 
as, for example, whether a close bond of friendship, in which 
we once voluntarily engage, ought to be severed on account 
of any unworthiness, which we subsequently detect in our 
friend. For, in these unions of hearts, — call them mar- 
riage, or whatever else, — we take each other for better for 
worse. Availing ourselves of our friend’s intimate affec- 
tion, we pledge our own, as to be relied upon in every emer- 
gency. And what sadder, more desperate emergency could 
there be, than had befallen Miriam.^ Who more need the 
tender succor of the innocent, than wretches stained with 
guilt! And must a selfish care for the spotlessness of our 
own garments keep us from pressing the guilty ones close 
to our hearts, wherein, for the very reason that we are in- 
nocent, lies their securest refuge from further ill? 

It was a sad thing for Hilda to find this moral enigma 
propounded to her conscience; and to feel that, whiehever 

sgi 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


way she might settle it^ there would be a cry of wrong on 
the other side. Stilly the idea stubbornly came back, that 
the tie between Miriam and herself had been real, the af- 
fection true, and that therefore the implied compact was not 
to be shaken off. 

“Miriam loved me well,” thought Hilda, remorsefully, 
“and I failed her at her sorest need.” 

Miriam loved her well; and not less ardent had been 
the affection which Miriam’s warm, tender, and generous 
characteristics had excited in Hilda’s more reserved and 
quiet nature. It had never been extinguished; for, in part, 
the wretchedness which Hilda had since endured was but 
the struggle and writhing of her sensibility, still yearning 
towards her friend. And now, at the earliest encourage- 
ment, it awoke again, and cried out piteously, complaining 
of the violence that had been done it. 

Recurring to the delinquencies of which she fancied (we 
say “fancied,” because we do not unhesitatingly adopt 
Hilda’s present view, but rather suppose her misled by her 
feelings) — of which she fancied herself guilty towards her 
friend, she suddenly remembered a sealed packet that 
Miriam had confided to her. It had been put into her hands 
with earnest injunctions of secrecy and care, and if mi- 
claimed after a certain period, was to be delivered accord- 
ing to its address. Hilda had forgotten it; or, rather, she 
had kept the thought of this commission in the background 
of her consciousness, with all other thoughts referring to 
Miriam. 

But now the recollection of this packet, and the evident 
stress which Miriam laid upon its delivery at the specified 
time, impelled Hilda to hurry up the staircase of her tower, 
dreading lest the period should already have elapsed. 

No; the hour had not gone by, but was on the very point 
of passing. Hilda read the brief note of instruction, on a 

392 


REMINISCENCES OF MIRIAM 


corner of the envelope, and discovered, that, in case of 
Miriam’s absence from Home, the packet was to be taken 
to its destination that very day. 

“How nearly I had violated my promise!” said Hilda. 
“And, since we are separated forever, it has the sacredness 
of an injunction from a dead friend. There is no time to 
be lost.” 

So Hilda set forth in the decline of the afternoon, and 
pursued her way towards the quarter of the city in which 
stands the Palazzo Cenci. Her habit of self-reliance was 
so simply strong, so natural, and now so well established by 
long use, that the idea of peril seldom or never occurred to 
Hilda, in her lonely life. 

She differed, in this particular, from the generality of 
her sex; although the customs and character of her native 
land often produce women who meet the world with gentle 
fearlessness, and discover that its terrors have been ab- 
surdly exaggerated by the tradition of mankind. In 
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the apprehensiveness 
of women is quite gratuitous. Even as matters now stand, 
they are really safer in perilous situations and emergencies 
than men ; and might be still more so, if they trusted them- 
selves more confidingly to the chivalry of manhood. In 
all her wanderings about Rome, Hilda had gone and re- 
turned as securely as she had been accustomed to tread the 
familiar street of her New England village, where every 
face wore a look of recognition. With respect to whatever 
was evil, foul, and ugly, in this populous and corrupt city, 
she trod as if invisible, and not only so, but blind. She was 
altogether unconscious of anything wicked that went along 
the same pathway, but without jostling or impeding her, 
any more than gross substance hinders the wanderings of a 
spirit. Thus it is, that, bad as the world is said to have 

393 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

grown^ innocence continues to make a paradise around it- 
self^ and keep it still unfallen. 

Hilda’s present expedition led her into what was — ^physi- 
cally^ at least — ^the foulest and ugliest part of Rome. In 
that vicinity lies the Ghetto^ where thousands of Jews are 
crowded within a narrow compass, and lead a close, unclean, 
and multitudinous life, resembling that of maggots when 
they over-populate a decaying cheese. 

Hilda passed on the borders of this region, but had no 
occasion to step within it. Its neighborhood, however, nat- 
urally partook of characteristics like its own. There was 
a confusion of black and hideous houses, piled massively out 
of the ruins of former ages ; rude and destitute of plan, as 
a pauper would build his hovel, and yet displaying here and 
there an arched gateway, a cornice, a pillar, or a broken 
arcade, that might have adorned a palace. Many of the 
houses, indeed, as they stood, might once have been palaces, 
and possessed still a squalid kind of grandeur. Dirt was 
everywhere, strewing the narrow streets, and incrusting the 
tall shabbiness of the edifices, from the foundations to the 
roofs; it lay upon the thresholds, and looked out of the 
windows, and assumed the guise of human life in the chil- 
dren that seemed to be engendered out of it. Their father 
was the sun, and their mother — a heap of Roman mud. 

It is a question of speculative interest, whether the 
ancient Romans were as unclean a people as we everywhere 
find those who have succeeded them. There appears to 
be a kind of malignant spell in the spots that have been 
inhabited by these masters of the world, or made famous in 
their history; an inherited and inalienable curse, impelling 
their successors to fling dirt and defilement upon whatever 
temple, column, ruined palace, or triumphal arch may be 
nearest at hand, and on every monument that the old 
Romans built. It is most probably a classic trait, regularly 

394 


REMINISCENCES OF MIRIAM 


transmitted downward, and perhaps a little modified by 
the better civilization of Christianity; so that Csesar may 
have trod narrower and filthier ways in his path to the 
Capitol, than even those of modern Rome. 

As the paternal abode of Beatrice, the gloomy old palace 
of the Cencis had an interest for Hilda, although not 
sufficiently strong, hitherto, to overcome the disheartening 
effect of the exterior, and draw her over its threshold. The 
adjacent piazza, of poor aspect, contained only an old 
woman selling roasted chestnuts and baked squash-seeds; 
she looked sharply at Hilda, and inquired whether she had 
lost her way. 

“No,” said Hilda; “I seek the Palazzo Cenci.” 

“Yonder it is, fair signorina,” replied the Roman matron. 
“If you wish that packet delivered, which I see in your 
hand, my grandson Pietro shall run with it for a baiocco. 
The Cenci palace is a spot of ill-omen for young maidens.” 

Hilda thanked the old dame, but alleged the necessity 
of doing her errand in person. She approached the front 
of the palace, which, with all its immensity, had but a 
mean appearance, and seemed an abode which the lovely 
shade of Beatrice would not be apt to haunt, unless her 
doom made it inevitable. Some soldiers stood about the 
portal, and gazed at the brown-haired, fair-cheeked Anglo- 
Saxon girl, with approving glances, but not indecorously. 
Hilda began to ascend the staircase, three lofty flights of 
which were to be surmounted, before reaching the door 
whither she was bound. 


S95 


CHAPTER XLIII 
The Extinction of a Lamp 

Between Hilda and the sculptor there had been a kind of 
half-expressed understanding, that both were to visit the 
galleries of the Vatican the day subsequent to their meeting 
at the studio. Kenyon, accordingly, failed not to be there, 
and wandered through the vast ranges of apartments, but 
saw nothing of his expected friend. The marble faces, 
which stand innumerable along the walls, and have kept 
themselves so calm through the vicissitudes of twenty cen- 
turies, had no sympathy for his disappointment; and he, on 
the other hand, strode past these treasures and marvels of 
antique art, with the indifference which any preoccupation 
of the feelings is apt to produce, in reference to objects 
of sculpture. Being of so cold and pure a substance, and 
mostly deriving their vitality more from thought than 
passion, they require to be seen through a perfectly trans- 
parent medium. 

And, moreover, Kenyon had counted so much upon 
Hilda’s delicate perceptions in enabling him to look at two 
or three of the statues, about which they had talked to- 
gether, that the entire purpose of his visit was defeated 
by her absence. It is a delicious sort of mutual aid, when 
the united power of two sympathetic, yet dissimilar, intel- 
ligences is brought to bear upon a poem by reading it aloud, 
or upon a picture or statue by viewing it in each other’s 
company. Even if not a word of criticism be uttered, the 
insight of either party is wonderfully deepened, and the 

396 


THE EXTINCTION OF A LAMP 


comprehension broadened; so that the inner mystery of a 
work of genius, hidden from one, will often reveal itself to 
two. Missing such help, Kenyon saw nothing at the Vati- 
can which he had not seen a thousand times before, and 
more perfectly than now. 

In the chill of his disappointment, he suspected that it 
was a very cold art to which he had devoted himself. He 
questioned, at that moment, whether sculpture really ever 
softens and warms the material which it handles; whether 
carved marble is anything but limestone, after all; and 
whether the Apollo Belvedere itself possesses any merit 
above its physical beauty, or is beyond criticism even in 
that generally acknowledged excellence. In flitting glances, 
heretofore, he had seemed to behold this statue, as some- 
thing ethereal and godlike, but not now. 

Nothing pleased him, unless it were the group of the 
Laocoon, which, in its immortal agony, impressed Kenyon 
as a type of the long, fierce struggle of man, involved in 
the knotted entanglements of Error and Evil, those two 
snakes, which, if no divine help intervene, will be sure to 
strangle him and his children in the end. What he most 
admired was the strange calmness diffused through this 
bitter strife; so that it resembled the rage of the sea made 
calm by its immensity, or the tumult of Niagara which 
ceases to be tumult because it lasts forever. Thus, in the 
Laocoon, the horror of a moment grew to be the fate of 
interminable ages. Kenyon looked upon the group as the 
one triumph of sculpture, creating the repose, which is es- 
sential to it, in the very acme of turbulent effort; but, in 
truth, it was his mood of unwonted despondency that made 
him so sensitive to the terrible magnificence, as well as to 
the sad moral, of this work. Hilda herself could not have 
helped him to see it with nearly such intelligence. 

A good deal more depressed than the nature of the 

397 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


disappointment warranted^ Kenyon went to his studio, and 
took in hand a great lump of clay. He soon found, how- 
ever, that his plastic cunning had departed from him for 
the time. So he wandered forth again into the uneasy 
streets of Rome, and walked up and down the Corso, where, 
at that period of the day, a throng of passers-by and 
loiterers choked up the narrow sidewalk. A penitent was 
thus brought in contact with the sculptor. 

It was a figure in a white robe, with a kind of feature- 
less mask over the face, through the apertures of which 
the eyes threw an unintelligible light. Such odd, question- 
able shapes are often seen gliding through the streets of 
Italian cities, and are understood to be usually persons of 
rank, who quit their palaces, their gayeties, their pomp, 
and pride, and assume the penitential garb for a season^ 
with a view of thus expiating some crime, or atoning for 
the aggregate of petty sins that make up a worldly life. 
It is their custom to ask alms, and perhaps to measure the 
duration of their penance by the time requisite to accumu- 
late a sum of money out of the little droppings of indi- 
vidual charity. The avails are devoted to some beneficent 
or religious purpose; so that the benefit accruing to their 
own souls is, in a manner, linked , with a good done, or 
intended, to their fellow-men. These figures have a 
ghastly and startling effect, not so much from any very 
impressive peculiarity in the garb, as from the mystery 
which they bear about with them, and the sense that there 
is an acknowledged sinfulness as the nucleus of it. 

In the present instance, however, the penitent asked no 
alms of Kenyon; although, for the space of a minute or 
two, they stood face to face, the hollow eyes of the mask 
encountering the sculptor’s gaze. But, just as the crowd 
was about to separate them, the former spoke, in a voice 

398 


THE EXTINCTION OF A LAMP 


not unfamiliar to Kenyon_, though rendered remote and 
strange by the guilty veil through which it penetrated. 

“Is all well with you. Signore.^” inquired the penitent, 
out of the cloud in which he walked. 

“All is well,” answered Kenyon. “And with you.^” 

But the masked penitent returned no answer, being 
borne away by the pressure of the throng. 

The sculptor stood watching the figure, and was almost 
of a mind to hurry after him and follow up the conversa- 
tion that had been begun; but it occurred to him that there 
is a sanctity (or, as we might rather term it, an inviolable 
etiquette) which prohibits the recognition of persons who 
choose to walk under the veil of penitence. 

“How strange!” thought Kenyon to himself. “It was 
surely Donatello ! What can bring him to Rome, where 
his recollections must be so painful, and his presence not 
without peril And Miriam! Can she have accompanied 
him.^” 

He walked on, thinking of the vast change in Donatello, 
since those days of gayety and innocence, when the young 
Italian was new in Rome, and was just beginning to be 
sensible of a more poignant felicity than he had yet 
experienced, in the sunny warmth of Miriam’s smile. The 
growth of a soul, which the sculptor half imagined that 
he had witnessed in his friend, seemed hardly worth the 
heavy price that it had cost, in the sacrifice of those simple 
enjoyments that were gone forever. A creature of antique 
healthfulness had vanished from the earth; and, in his 
stead, there was only one other morbid and remorseful man, 
among millions that were cast in the same indistinguishable 
mould. 

The accident of thus meeting Donatello — the glad Faun 
of his imagination and memory, now transformed into a 
gloomy penitent — contributed to deepen the cloud that had 

399 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

fallen over Kenyon’s spirits. It caused him to fancy, as 
we generally do, in the petty troubles which extend not 
a hand’s-breadth beyond our own sphere, that the whole 
world was saddening around him. It took the sinister 
aspect of an omen, although he could not distinctly see 
what trouble it might forebode. 

If it had not been for a peculiar sort of pique, with 
which lovers are much conversant, a preposterous 
kind of resentment which endeavors to wreak itself on 
the beloved object, and on one’s own heart, in requital 
of mishaps for which neither is in fault, Kenyon might 
at once have betaken himself to Hilda’s studio, and asked 
why the appointment was not kept. But the interview of 
to-day was to have been so rich in present joy, and its 
results so important to his future life, that the bleak failure 
was too much for his equanimity. He was angry with 
poor Hilda, and censured her without a hearing; angry 
with himself, too, and therefore inflicted on this latter crim- 
inal the severest penalty in his power; angry with the 
day that was passing over him, and would not permit its 
latter hours to redeem the disappointment of the morning. 

To confess the truth, it had been the sculptor’s purpose 
to stake all his hopes on that interview in the galleries of 
the Vatican. Straying with Hilda through those long 
vistas of ideal beauty, he meant, at last, to utter himself 
upon that theme which lovers are fain to discuss in village 
lanes, in wood-paths, on sea-side sands, in crowded streets; 
it little matters where, indeed, since roses are sure to blush 
along the way, and daisies and violets to spring beneath 
the feet, if the spoken word be graciously received. He 
was resolved to make proof whether the kindness that 
Hilda evinced for him was the precious token of an indi- 
vidual preference, or merely the sweet fragrance of her 
disposition, which other friends might share as largely as 

400 


THE EXTINCTION OF A LAMP 


himself. He would try if it were possible to take this shy, 
yet frank, and innocently fearless creature captive, and 
imprison her in his heart, and make her sensible of a wider 
freedom there, than in all the world besides. 

It was hard, we must allow, to see the shadow of a 
wintry sunset falling upon a day that was to have been 
so bright, and to find himself just where yesterday had 
left him, only with a sense of being drearily balked, and 
defeated without an opportunity for struggle. So much 
had been anticipated from these now vanished hours, that 
it seemed as if no other day could bring back the same 
golden hopes. 

In a case like this, it is doubtful whether Kenyon could 
have done a much better thing than he actually did, by 
going to dine at the Cafe Nuove, and drinking a flask of 
Montefiascone ; longing, the while, for a beaker or two of 
Donatello’s Sunshine. It would have been just the wine 
to cure a lover’s melancholy, by illuminating his heart with 
tender light and warmth, and suggestions of undefined 
hopes, too ethereal for his morbid humor to examine and 
reject them. 

No decided improvement resulting from the draught 
of Montefiascone, he went to the Teatro Argentine, and sat 
gloomily to see an Italian comedy, which ought to have 
cheered him somewhat, being full of glancing merriment, 
and effective over everybody’s risibilities except his own. 
The sculptor came out, however, before the close of the 
performance, as disconsolate as he went in. 

As he made his way through the complication of narrow 
streets, which perplex that portion of the city, a carriage 
, passed him. It was driven rapidly, but not too fast for 
the light of a gas-lamp to flare upon a face within; 
especially as it was bent forward, appearing to recognize 
him, while a beckoning hand was protruded from the 
I 401 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


window. On his part^ Kenyon at once knew the face^ and 
hastened to the carriage^ which had now stopped. 

“Miriam! you in Rome.^” he exclaimed. “And your 
friends know nothing of it.^” 

“Is all well with you?” she asked. 

This inquiry, in the identical words which Donatello had 
so recently addressed to him, from beneath the penitent’s 
mask, startled the sculptor. Either the previous dis- 
quietude of his mind, or some tone in Miriam’s voice, or 
the unaccountableness of beholding her there at all, made 
it seem ominous. 

“All is well, I believe,” answered he, doubtfully. “I am 
aware of no misfortune. Have you any to announce?” 

He looked still more earnestly at Miriam, and felt a 
dreamy imcertainty whether it was really herself to whom 
he spoke. True; there were those beautiful features, the 
contour of which he had studied too often, and with a 
sculptor’s accuracy of perception, to be in any doubt that 
it was Miriam’s identical face. But he was conscious of 
a change, the nature of which he could not satisfactorily 
define; it might be merely her dress, which, imperfect as 
the light was, he saw to be richer than the simple garb 
that she had usually worn. The effect, he fancied, was 
partly owing to a gem which she had on her bosom; not 
a diamond, but something that glimmered with a clear, 
red lustre, like the stars in a southern sky. Somehow or 
other, this colored light seemed an emanation of herself, 
as if all that was passionate and glowing, in her native 
disposition, had crystallized upon her breast, and were 
just now scintillating more brilliantly than ever, in sympa- 
thy with some emotion of her heart. 

Of course there could be no real doubt that it was 
Miriam, his artist friend, with whom and Hilda he had 
spent so many pleasant and familiar hours, and whom he 

402 


THE EXTINCTION OF A LAMP 

had last seen at Perugia, bending with Donatello beneath 
the bronze pope’s benediction. It must be that self-same 
Miriam; but the sensitive sculptor felt a difference of 
manner, which impressed him more than he conceived it 
possible to be affected by so external a thing. He remem- 
bered the gossip so prevalent in Rome on Miriam’s first 
appearance; how that she was no real artist, but the 
daughter of an illustrious or golden lineage, who was 
merely playing at necessity; mingling with human struggle 
for her pastime; stepping out of her native sphere only 
for an interlude, just as a princess might alight from her 
gilded equipage to go on foot through a rustic lane. And 
now, after a mask in which love and death had performed 
their several parts, she had resumed her proper character. 

“Have you anything to tell me?” cried he, impatiently; 
for nothing causes a more disagreeable vibration of the 
nerves than this perception of ambiguousness in familiar 
persons or affairs. “Speak; for my spirits and patience 
have been much tried to-day.” 

Miriam put her finger on her lips and seemed desirous 
that Kenyon should know of the presence of a third person. 
He now saw, indeed, that there was some one beside her 
in the carriage, hitherto concealed by her attitude; a man, 
it appeared, with a sallow Italian face, which the sculptor 
distinguished but imperfectly, and did not recognize. 

“I can tell you nothing,” she replied; and leaning 
towards him, she whispered, — appearing then more like 
the Miriam whom he knew than in what had before 
passed, — “Only, when the lamp goes out do not despair.” 

The carriage drove on, leaving Kenyon to muse over this 
unsatisfactory interview, which seemed to have served no 
better purpose than to fill his mind with more ominous 
forebodings than before. Why were Donatello and 
Miriam in Rome, where both, in all likelihood, might have 

403 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


much to dread? And why had one and the other addressed 
him with a question that seemed prompted by a knowledge 
of some calamity,, either already fallen on his unconscious 
head, or impending closely over him? 

“I am sluggish,” muttered Kenyon, to himself ; “a weak, 
nerveless fool, devoid of energy and promptitude; or 
neither Donatello nor Miriam could have escaped me thus ! 
They are aware of some misfortune that concerns me 
deeply. How soon am I to know it too?” 

There seemed but a single ealamity possible to happen 
within so narrow a sphere as that with which the sculptor 
was connected; and even to that one mode of evil he could 
assign no definite shape, but only felt that it must have 
some reference to Hilda. 

Flinging aside the morbid hesitation, and the dallyings 
with his own wishes, which he had permitted to influence 
his mind throughout the day, he now hastened to the 
Via Portoghese. Soon the old palace stood before him, 
with its massive tower rising into the clouded night; 
obscured from view at its midmost elevation, but revealed 
again, higher upward, by the Virgin’s lamp that twinkled 
on the summit. Feeble as it was, in the broad, surrounding 
gloom, that little ray made no inconsiderable illumination 
among Kenyon’s sombre thoughts; for, remembering 
Miriam’s last words, a fantasy had seized him that he 
should find the saered lamp extinguished. 

And, even while he stood gazing, as a mariner at the 
star in which he put his trust, the light quivered, sank, 
gleamed up again, and finally went out, leaving the battle- 
ments of Hilda’s tower in utter darkness. For the first 
time in centuries, the consecrated and legendary flame, 
before the loftiest shrine in Rome, had ceased to burn. 


404 


CHAPTER XLIV 
The Deserted Shrine 

Kenyon knew the sanctity which Hilda (faithful Protes- 
tant, and daughter of the Puritans, as the girl was) imputed 
to this shrine. He was aware of the profound feeling of 
responsibility, as well earthly as religious, with which her 
conscience had been impressed, when she became the occu- 
pant of her aerial chamber, and undertook the task of 
keeping the consecrated lamp alight. There was an 
accuracy and a certainty about Hilda’s movements, as 
regarded all matters that lay deep enough to have their 
roots in right or wrong, which made it as possible and safe 
; to rely upon the timely and careful trimming of this lamp 
; (if she were in life, and able to creep up the steps), as 
I upon the rising of to-morrow’s sun, with lustre undimin- 
I ished from to-day. 

I The sculptor could scarcely believe his eyes, therefore, 
when he saw the flame flicker and expire. His sight had 
surely deceived him. And now, since the light did not 
reappear, there must be some smoke-wreath or impenetrable 
mist brooding about the tower’s gray old head, and obscur- 
ing it from the lower world. But no! For right over the 
dim battlements, as the wind chased away a mass of clouds, 
he beheld a star, and, moreover, by an earnest concentration 
of his sight, was soon able to discern even the darkened 
shrine itself. There was no obscurity around the tower; 
no infirmity of his own vision. The flame had exhausted 
its supply of oil, and become extinct. But where was 
Hilda? 


405 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


A man in a cloak happened to be passing ; and Kenyon — 
anxious to distrust the testimony of his senses^ if he could 
get more acceptable evidence on the other side — appealed 
to him. 

“Do me the favor^ Signore/’ said he, “to look at the top ; 
of yonder tower, and tell me whether you see the lamp 
burning at the Virgin’s shrine.” i 

“The lamp. Signore?” answered the man, without at first ; 
troubling himself to look up. “The lamp that has burned i 
these four hundred years! how is it possible. Signore, that ■ 
it should not be burning now?” r 

“But look!” said the sculptor, impatiently. j 

With good-natured indulgence for what he seemed to * 
consider as the whim of an eccentric Forestiero, the Italian i 
carelessly threw his eyes upwards; but, as soon as he per- | 
ceived that there was really no light, he lifted his hands i 
with a vivid expression of wonder and alarm. 

“The lamp is extinguished!” cried he. “The lamp that 
has been burning these four hundred years! This surely 
must portend some great misfortune; and, by my advice. 
Signore, you will hasten hence, lest the tower tumble on 
our heads. A priest once told me, that, if the Virgin with- 
drew her blessing, and the light went out, the old Palazzo 
del Torre would sink into the earth, with all that dwell in 
it. There will be a terrible crash before morning!” 

The stranger made the best of his way from the doomed 
premises; while Kenyon — who would willingly have seen 
the tower crumble down before his eyes, on condition of 
Hilda’s safety — determined, late as it was, to attempt as- 
certaining if she were in her dove-cote. 

Passing through the arched entrance, — which, as is often 
the case with Roman entrances, was as accessible at 
midnight as at noon, — he groped his way to the broad 
staircase, and, lighting his wax taper, went glimmering 

406 


THE DESERTED SHRINE 


up the multitude of steps that led to Hilda’s door. The 
hour being so unseasonable^ he intended merely to knock, 
and, as soon as her voice from within should reassure him, 
to retire, keeping his explanations and apologies for a fitter 
time. Accordingly, reaching the lofty height where the 
maiden, as he trusted, lay asleep, with angels watching over 
her, though the Virgin seemed to have suspended her care, 
he tapped lightly at the door-panels, — then knocked more 
forcibly, — then thundered an impatient summons. No an- 
swer came; Hilda, evidently, was not there. 

After assuring himself that this must be the fact, Ken- 
yon descended the stairs, but made a pause at every suc- 
cessive stage, and knocked at the door of its apartment, re- 
gardless whose slumbers he might disturb, in his anxiety to 
learn where the girl had last been seen. But, at each 
closed entrance, there came those hollow echoes, which a 
chamber, or any dwelling, great or small, never sends out, 
in response to human knuckles or iron hammer, as long as 
there is life within to keep its heart from getting dreary. 

Once, indeed, on the lower landing-place, the sculptor 
fancied that there was a momentary stir, inside the door, as 
if somebody were listening at the threshold. He hoped, 
at least, that the small, iron-barred aperture would be un- 
closed, through which Roman housekeepers are wont to take 
careful cognizance of applicants for admission, from a tra- 
ditionary dread, perhaps, of letting in a robber or assassin. 
But it remained shut; neither was the sound repeated; and 
Kenyon concluded that his excited nerves had played a 
trick upon his senses, as they are apt to do when we most 
wish for the clear evidence of the latter. 

There was nothing to be done, save to go heavily away, 
and await whatever good or ill to-morrow’s daylight might 
disclose. 

Betimes in the morning, therefore, Kerryon went back to 

407 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


the Via Portoghese, before the slant rays of the sun had 
descended half-way down the gray front of Hilda’s tower. 
As he drew near its base^ he saw the doves perched in full 
session, on the sunny height of the battlements, and a pair 
of them— who were probably their mistress’s especial pets, 
and the confidants of her bosom-secrets, if Hilda had any — 
came shooting down, and made a feint of alighting on his 
shoulder. But, though they evidently recognized him, their 
shyness would not yet allow so decided a demonstration. 
Kenyon’s eyes followed them as they flew upward, hoping 
that they might have corneas joyful messengers of the girl’s 
safety, and that he should discern her slender form, half 
hidden by the parapet, trimming the extinguished lamp at 
the Virgin’s shrine, just as other maidens set about the little 
duties of a household. Or, perhaps, he might see her gentle 
and sweet face smiling down upon him, midway towards 
heaven, as if she had flo^vn thither for a day or two, just to 
visit her kindred, but had been drawn earthward again by 
the spell of unacknowledged love. 

But his eyes were blessed by no such fair vision or 
reality; nor, in truth, were the eager, unquiet flutterings of 
the doves indicative of any joyful intelligence, which they 
longed to share with Hilda’s friend, but of anxious in- 
quiries that they knew not how to utter. They could not 
tell, any more than he, whither their lost companion had 
withdrawn herself, but were in the same void despondency 
with him, feeling their sunny and airy lives darkened and 
grown imperfect, now that her sweet society was taken out 
of it. 

In the brisk morning air, Kenyon found it much easier 
to pursue his researches than at the preceding midnight, 
when, if any slumberers heard the clamor that he made, 
they had responded only with sullen and drowsy maledic- 
tions, and turned to sleep again. It must be a very dear 

408 


THE DESERTED SHRINE 


and intimate reality for which people will be content to 
give up a dream. When the sun was fairly up, however, 
it was quite another thing. The heterogeneous population, 
inhabiting the lower floor of the old tower, and the other 
extensive regions of the palace, were now willing to tell all 
they knew, and imagine a great deal more. The amiability 
of these Italians, assisted by their sharp and nimble wits, 
caused them to overflow with plausible suggestions, and to 
be very bounteous in their avowals of interest for the lost 
Hilda. In a less demonstrative people, such expressions 
would have implied an eagerness to search land and sea, 
and never rest till she were found. In the mouths that 
uttered them, they meant good wishes, and were, so far, 
better than indifference. There was little doubt that many 
of them felt a genuine kindness for the shy, brown-haired, 
delicate, young foreign maiden, who had flown from some 
distant land to alight upon their tower, where she consorted 
only with the doves. But their energy expended itself in 
exclamation, and they were content to leave all more active 
measures to Kenyon, and to the Virgin, whose aflTair it was, 
to see that the faithful votary of her lamp received no harm. 

In a great Parisian domicile, multifarious as its inhabi- 
tants might be, the concierge under the archway would be 
cognizant of all their incomings and issuings forth. But, 
except in rare cases, the general entrance and main stair- 
case of a Roman house are left as free as the street, of 
which they form a sort of by-lane. The sculptor, therefore, 
could hope to find information about Hilda^s movements 
only from casual observers. 

On probing the knowledge of these people to the bottom, 
there was various testimony as to the period when the girl 
had last been seen. Some said that it was four days since 
there had been a trace of her; but an English lady, in the 
second piano of the palace, was rather of opinion that she 

409 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


had met her, the morning before, with a drawing-book in 
her hand. Having no acquaintance with the young person, 
she had taken little notice and might have been mistaken. 
A count, on the piano next above, was very certain that he 
had lifted his hat to Hilda, under the archway, two after- 
noons ago. An old woman, who had formerly tended the 
shrine, threw some light upon the matter, by testifying that 
the lamp required to be replenished once, at least, in three 
days, though its reservoir of oil was exceedingly capacious. 

On the whole, though there was other evidence enough 
to create some perplexity, Kenyon could not satisfy him- 
self that she had been visible since the afternoon of the 
third preceding day, when a fruit-seller remembered her 
coming out of the arched passage, with a sealed packet in 
her hand. As nearly as he could ascertain, this was within 
an hour after Hilda had taken leave of the sculptor, at his 
own studio, with the understanding that they were to meet 
at the Vatican the next day. Two nights, therefore, had 
intervened, during which the lost maiden was unaccounted 
for. 

The door of Hilda’s apartments was still locked, as on 
the preceding night ; but Kenyon sought out the wife of the 
person who sublet them, and prevailed on her to give him 
admittance by means of the duplicate key, which the good 
woman had in her possession. On entering, the maidenly 
neatness and simple grace, recognizable in all the arrange- 
ments, made him visibly sensible that this was the daily 
haunt of a pure soul, in whom religion and the love of 
beauty were at one. 

Thence, the sturdy Roman matron led the sculptor across 
a narrow passage, and threw open the door of a small cham- 
ber, on the threshold of which he reverently paused. With- 
in, there was a bed, covered with white drapery, enclosed 
with snowy curtains, like a tent, and of barely width enough 

410 


THE DESERTED SHRINE 


for a slender figure to repose upon it. The sight of this 
cool, airy, and secluded bower caused the lover’s heart to 
stir as if enough of Hilda’s gentle dreams were lingering 
there to make him happy for a single instant. But then 
came the closer consciousness of her loss, bringing along 
with it a sharp sting of anguish. 

“Behold, Signore,” said the matron; “here is the little 
staircase by which the signorina used to ascend and trim 
the Blessed Virgin’s lamp. She was worthy to be a Catho- 
lic, such pains the good child bestowed to keep it burning; 
and doubtless the Blessed Mary will intercede for her, in 
consideration of her pious offices, heretic though she was. 
What will become of the old palazzo, now that the lamp is 
extinguished, the saints above us only know! Will you 
mount. Signore, to the battlements, and see if she have left 
any trace of herself there 

The sculptor stepped across the chamber and ascended 
the little staircase, which gave him access to the breezy 
summit of the tower. It affected him inexpressibly to see 
a bouquet of beautiful flowers beneath the shrine, and to 
recognize in them an offering of his own to Hilda, who had 
put them in a vase of water, and dedicated them to the Vir- 
gin, in a spirit partly fanciful, perhaps, but still partaking 
of the religious sentiment which so profoundly influenced 
her character. One rose-bud, indeed, she had selected for 
herself from the rich mass of flowers; for Kenyon well re- 
membered recognizing it in her bosom when he last saw 
her at his studio. 

“That little part of my great love she took,” said he to 
himself. “The remainder she would have devoted to 
Heaven; but has left it withering in the sun and wind. 
Ah! Hilda, Hilda, had you given me a right to watch over 
you, this evil had not come !” 

“Be not downcast, signorino mio,” said the Roman ma- 
411 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


tron, in response to the deep sigh which struggled out of 
Kenyon’s breast. “The dear little maiden^ as we see^ has 
decked yonder blessed shrine as devoutly as I myself, or 
any other good Catholic woman, could have done. It is a 
religious act, and has more than the efficacy of a prayer. 
The signorina will as surely come back as the sun will fall 
through the window to-morrow no less than to-day. Her 
own doves have often been missing for a day or two, but 
they were sure to come fluttering about her head again, 
when she least expected them. So will it be with this dove- 
like child.” 

“It might be so,” thought Kenyon, with yearning anxi- 
ety, “if a pure maiden were as safe as a dove, in this evil 
world of ours.” 

As they returned through the studio, with the fur- 
niture and arrangements of which the sculptor was fa- 
miliar, he missed a small ebony writing-desk that he re- 
membered as having always been placed on a table there. 
He knew that it was Hilda’s custom to deposit her letters in 
this desk, as well as other little objects of which she wished 
to be specially careful. 

“What has become of it?” he suddenly inquired, laying 
his hand on the table. 

“Become of what, pray?” exclaimed the woman, a little 
disturbed. “Does the Signore suspect a robbery, then?” 

“The signor ina’s writing-desk is gone,” replied Kenyon; 
“it always stood on this table, and I myself saw it there 
only a few days ago.” 

“Ah, well!” said the woman, recovering her composure, 
which she seemed partly to have lost. “The signorina has 
doubtless taken it away with her. The fact is of good omen ; 
for it proves that she did not go unexpectedly, and is likely 
to return when it may best suit her convenience.” 

“This is very singular,” observed Kenyon. “Have the 
412 


THE DESERTED SHRINE 

rooms been entered by yourself, or any other person, since 
the signorina’s disappearance?” 

“Not by me. Signore, so help me Heaven and the saints !” 
said the matron. “And I question whether there are more 
than two keys in Rome that will suit this strange old lock. 
Here is one; and as for the other, the signorina carries it in 
her pocket.” 

The sculptor had no reason to doubt the word of this re- 
spectable dame. She appeared to be well-meaning and 
kind-hearted, as Roman matrons generally are ; except 
when a fit of passion incites them to shower horrible curses 
on an obnoxious individual, or perhaps to stab him with the 
steel stiletto that serves them for a hair-pin. But Italian 
asseverations of any questionable fact, however true they 
may chance to be, have no witness of their truth in the 
faces of those who utter them. Their words are spoken 
with strange earnestness, and yet do not vouch for them- 
selves as coming from any depth, like roots drawn out of 
the substance of the soul, with some of the soil clinging to 
them. There is always a something inscrutable, instead of 
frankness in their eyes. In short, they lie so much like 
truth, and speak truth so much as if they were telling a lie, 
that their auditor suspects himself in the wrong, whether 
he believes or disbelieves them; it being the one thing cer- 
tain, that falsehood is seldom an intolerable burden to the 
tenderest of Italian consciences. 

“It is very strange what can have become of the desk!” 
repeated Kenyon, looking the woman in the face. 

“Very strange, indeed. Signore,” she replied meekly, 
without turning away her eyes in the least, but checking his 
insight of them about half an inch below the surface. ‘T 
think the signorina must have taken it with her.” 

It seemed idle to linger here any longer. Kenyon there- 
fore departed, after making an arrangement with the 

413 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


woman^ by the terms of which she was to allow the apart- 
ments to remain in their present state^ on his assuming the 
responsibility for the rent. 

He spent the day in making such further search and in- 
vestigation as he found practicable; and^ though at first 
trammelled by an unwillingness to draw public attention 
to Hilda’s affairs^ the urgency of the circumstances soon 
compelled him to be thoroughly in earnest. In the course 
of a week^ he tried all conceivable modes of fathoming the 
mystery, not merely by his personal efforts and those of his 
brother-artists and friends, but through the police, who 
readily undertook the task, and expressed strong confidence 
of success. But the Roman police has very little efficiency, 
except in the interest of the despotism of which it is a tool. 
With their cocked hats, shoulder-belts, and swords, they 
wear a sufficiently imposing aspect, and doubtless keep their 
eyes open wide enough to track a political offender, but 
are too often blind to private outrage, be it murder or any 
lesser crime. Kenyon counted little upon their assistance, 
and profited by it not at all. 

Remembering the mystic words which Miriam had ad- 
dressed to him, he was anxious to meet her, but knew not 
whither she had gone, nor how to obtain an interview either 
with herself or Donatello. The days wore away, and still 
there were no tidings of the lost one; no lamp rekindled 
before the Virgin’s shrine; no light shining into the lover’s 
heart; no star of Hope — he was ready to say, as he turned 
his eyes almost reproachfully upward — in Heaven itself! 


414 


CHAPTER XLV 
The Flight of Hilda’s Doves 

Along with the lamp on Hilda’s tower, the sculptor now 
felt that a light had gone out, or, at least, was ominously 
obscured, to which he owed whatever cheerfulness had here- 
tofore illuminated his cold, artistic life. The idea of this 
girl had been like a taper of virgin wax, burning with a 
pure and steady flame, and chasing away the evil spirits 
out of the magic circle of its beams. It had darted its rays 
afar, and modified the whole sphere in which Kenyon had 
his being. Beholding it no more, he at once found himself 
in darkness and astray. 

This was the time, perhaps, when Kenyon first became 
sensible what a dreary city is Rome, and what a terrible 
weight is there imposed on human life, when any gloom 
within the heart corresponds to the spell of ruin, that has 
been thrown over the site of ancient empire. He wandered, 
as it were, and stumbled over the fallen columns, and 
among the tombs, and groped his way into the supulchral 
darkness of the catacombs, and found no path emerging 
from them. The happy may well enough continue to be 
such, beneath the brilliant sky of Rome. But, if you go 
thither in melancholy mood, — if you go with a ruin in your 
heart, or with a vacant site there, where once stood the airy 
fabric of happiness, now vanished, — all the ponderous 
gloom of the Roman Past will pile itself upon that spot, 
and crush you down as with the heaped-up marble and 

415 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


granite^ the earth-mounds^ and multitudinous bricks of its 
material decay. 

It might be supposed that a melancholy man would here 
make acquaintance with a grim philosophy. He should 
learn to bear patiently his individual griefs, that endure 
only for one little lifetime, when here are the tokens of 
such infinite misfortune on an imperial scale, and when so 
many far landmarks of time, all around him, are bringing 
the remoteness of a thousand years ago into the sphere of 
yesterday. But it is in vain that you seek this shrub of 
bitter sweetness among the plants that root themselves on 
the roughness of massive walls, or trail downward from the 
capitals of pillars, or spring out of the green turf in the 
palace of the Caesars. It does not grow in Rome; not even 
among the five hundred various weeds which deck the grassy 
arches of the Coliseum. You look through a vista of cen- ! 
tury beyond century, — through much shadow, and a little 
sunshine, — through barbarism and civilization, alternating 
with, one another like actors that have prearranged their ; 
parts, — through a broad pathway of progressive genera- ; 
tions bordered by palaces and temples, and bestridden by 
old, triumphal arches, until, in the distance, you behold the ' 
obelisks, with their unintelligible inscriptions, hinting at 
a past infinitely more remote than history can define. Your 
own life is as nothing, when compared with that immeasur- 
able distance; but still you demand, none the less earnestly,' 
a gleam of sunshine, instead of a speck of shadow, on the i 
step or two that will bring you to your quiet rest. 

How exceedingly absurd! All men, from the date of the ! 
earliest obelisk, — and of the whole world, moreover, since 
that far epoch, and before, — have made a similar demand, 
and seldom had their wish. If they had it, what are they 
the better now ? But, even while you taunt yourself with 
this sad lesson, your heart cries out obstreperously for its 

416 


THE FLIGHT OF HILDA’S DOVES 


small share of earthly happiness, and will not be appeased 
by the myriads of dead hopes that lie crushed into the soil 
of Rome. How wonderful that this our narrow foothold 
of the Present should hold its own so constantly, and, while 
every moment changing, should still be like a rock betwixt 
the encountering tides of the long Past and the infinite 
To-come ! 

Man of marble though he was, the sculptor grieved for 
the Irrevocable. Looking back upon Hilda’s way of life, 
he marvelled at his own blind stupidity, which had kept 
him from remonstrating — as a friend, if with no stronger 
right — against the risks that she continually encountered. 
Being so innocent, she had no means of estimating those 
risks, nor even a possibility of suspecting their existence. 
But he — who had spent years in Rome, with a man’s far 
wider scope of observation and experience — knew things 
that made him shudder. It seemed to Kenyon, looking 
through the darkly colored medium of his fears, that all 
modes of crime were crowded into the close intricacy of 
Roman streets, and that there was no redeeming element, 
such as exists in other dissolute and wicked cities. 

For here was a priesthood, pampered, sensual, with red 
and bloated cheeks, and carnal eyes. With apparently a 
grosser development of animal life than most men, they 
were placed in an unnatural relation with woman, and 
thereby lost the healthy, human conscience that pertains 
to other human beings, who own the sweet household ties 
connecting them with wife and daughter. And here was 
an indolent nobility, with no high aims or opportunities, 
but cultivating a vicious way of life, as if it were an art, 
and the only one which they cared to learn. Here was a 
population, high and low, that had no genuine belief in 
virtue; and if they recognized any act as criminal, they 
might throw off all care, remorse, and memory of it, by 

417 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


kneeling a little while at the confessional^ and rising un- 
burdened, active, elastic, and incited by fresh appetite for 
the next ensuing sin. Here was a soldiery who felt Rome 
to be their conquered city, and doubtless considered them- 
selves the legal inheritors of the foul license which Gaul, • 
Goth, and Vandal have here exercised in days gone by. 

And what localities for new crime existed in those guilty \ 
sites, where the crime of departed ages used to be at home, > 
and had its long, hereditary haunt! What street in Rome, fj 
what ancient ruin, what one place where man had standing- [j 
room, what fallen stone was there, unstained with one or ij 
another kind of guilt! In some of the vicissitudes of the j 
city’s pride, or its calamity, the dark tide of human evil had ! 
swelled over it, far higher than the Tiber ever rose against I 
the acclivities of the seven hills. To Kenyon’s morbid view, | 
there appeared to be a contagious element, rising foglike 
from the ancient depravity of Rome, and brooding over the ; 
dead and half -rotten city, as nowhere else on earth. It pro- ; 
longed the tendency to crime, and developed an instan- ; 
taneous growth of it, whenever an opportunity was found. | 
And where could it be found so readily as here! In those 
vast palaces, there were a hundred remote nooks where In- i| 
nocence might shriek in vain. Beneath meaner houses there \ 
were unsuspected dungeons that had once been princely j 
chambers, and open to the daylight ; but, on account of some ; 
wickedness there perpetrated, each passing age had thrown I 
its handful of dust upon the spot, and buried it from sight. | 
Only ruffians knew of its existence, and kept it for murder, 
and worse crime. i 

Such was the city through which Hilda, for three years .i 
past, had been wandering without a protector or a guide. | 
She had trodden lightly over the crumble of old crimes; , 
she had taken her way amid the grime and corruption which 1 
Paganism had left there, and a perverted Christianity had 

418 


THE FLIGHT OF HILDA’S DOVES 


made more noisome; walking saint-like through it all, with 
white, innocent feet; until, in some dark pitfall that lay 
right across her path, she had vanished out of sight. It 
was terrible to imagine what hideous outrage might have 
thrust her into that abyss ! 

Then the lover tried to comfort himself with the idea 
that Hilda’s sanctity was a sufficient safeguard. Ah, yes; 
she was so pure ! The angels, that were of the same sister- 
hood, would never let Hilda come to harm. A miracle 
would be wrought on her behalf, as naturally as a father 
would stretch out his hand to save a best-beloved child. 
Providence would keep a little area and atmosphere about 
her as safe and wholesome as heaven itself, although the 
flood of perilous iniquity might hem her round, and its 
black waves hang curling above her head! But these re- 
flections were of slight avail. No doubt they were the re- 
ligious truth. Yet the ways of Providence are utterly in- 
scrutable; and many a murder has been done, and many an 
innocent virgin has lifted her white arms, beseeching its aid 
in her extremity, and all in vain; so that, though Provi- 
dence is inflnitely good and wise, — and perhaps for that 
very reason, — it may be half an eternity before the great 
circle of its scheme shall bring us the superabundant recom- 
pense for all these sorrows! But what the lover asked was 
such prompt consolation as might consist with the brief 
span of mortal life; the assurance of Hilda’s present 
safety, and her restoration within that very hour. 

An imaginative man, he suffered the penalty of his en- 
dowment in the hundred-fold variety of gloomily tinted 
scenes that it presented to him, in which Hilda was always 
a central figure. The sculptor forgot his marble. Rome 
ceased to be anything, for him, but a labyrinth of dismal 
streets, in one or another of which the lost girl had disap- 
peared. He was haunted with the idea, that some circum- 

419 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


stance, most important to be known, and, perhaps, easily ' 
discoverable, had hitherto been overlooked, and that, if he ' 
could lay hold of this one clew, it would guide him directly 
in the track of Hilda’s footsteps. With this purpose in j 
view, he went, every morning, to the Via Portoghese, and \ 
made it the starting-point of fresh investigations. After 
nightfall, too, he invariably returned thither, with a faint f 
hope fluttering at his heart that the lamp might again be ; 
shining on the summit of the tower, and would dispel this j 
ugly mystery out of the circle consecrated by its rays. i 
There being no point of which he could take firm hold, \ 
his mind was filled with unsubstantial hopes and fears. ! 
Once, Kenyon had seemed to cut his life in marble; now he I 
vaguely clutched at it, and found it vapor. ; 

In his unstrung and despondent mood, one trifling cir- I 
cumstance aflfected him with an idle pang. The doves had 
at first been faithful to their lost mistress. They failed 
not to sit in a row upon her window-sill, or to alight on 
the shrine, or the church-angels, and on the roofs and por- 
tals of the neighboring houses, in evident expectation of 
her reappearance. After the second week, however, they 
began to take flight, and dropping off* by pairs, betook them- 
selves to other dove-cotes. Only a single dove remained, 
and brooded drearily beneath the shrine. The flock, that 
had departed, were like the many hopes that had vanished 
from Kenyon’s heart; the one that still lingered, and looked 
so wretched, — was it a Hope, or already a Despair? 

In the street, one day, the sculptor met a priest of mild 
and venerable aspect; and as his mind dwelt continually 
upon Hilda, and was especially active in bringing up all 
incidents that had ever been connected with her, it im- 
mediately struck him that this was the very father with 
whom he had seen her at the confessional. Such trust did 
Hilda inspire in him, that Kenyon had never asked what 

420 


THE FLIGHT OF HILDA’S DOVES 


was the subject of the communication between herself and 
this old priest. He had no reason for imagining that it 
could have any relation with her disappearance, so long sub- 
sequently; but, being thus brought face to face with a per- 
sonage, mysteriously associated, as he now remembered, with 
her whom he had lost, an impulse ran before his thoughts 
and led the sculptor to address him. 

It might be that the reverend kindliness of the old man’s 
expression took Kenyon’s heart by surprise; at all events, 
he spoke as if there were a recognized acquaintanceship, 
and an object of mutual interest between them. 

“She has gone from me, father,” said he. 

“Of whom do you speak, my son inquired the priest. 

“Of that sweet girl,” answered Kenyon, “who knelt to 
you at the confessional. Surely, you remember her, among 
all the mortals to whose confessions you have listened! For 
she alone could have had no sins to reveal.” 

“Yes; I remember,” said the priest, with a gleam of 
recollection in his eyes. “She was made to bear a miracu- 
lous testimony to the efficacy of the divine ordinances of 
the Church, by seizing forcibly upon one of them, and 
finding immediate relief from it, heretic though she was. 
It is my purpose to publish a brief narrative of this mira- 
cle, for the edification of mankind, in Latin, Italian, and 
English, from the printing-press of the Propaganda. Poor 
child! Setting apart her heresy, she was spotless, as you 
say. And is she dead?” 

“Heaven forbid, father!” exclaimed Kenyon, shrinking 
back. “But she has gone from me, I know not whither. 
It may be — yes, the idea seizes upon my mind — ^that what 
she revealed to you will suggest some clew to the mystery 
of her disappearance.” 

“None, my son, none,” answered the priest, shaking his 
head; “nevertheless, I bid you be of good cheer. That 

421 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


young maiden is not doomed to die a heretic. Who knows 
what the Blessed Virgin may at this moment be doing for 
her soul! Perhaps, when you next behold her, she will be 
clad in the shining white robe of the true faith.” 

This latter suggestion did not convey all the comfort 
which the old priest possibly intended by it; but he im- 
parted it to the sculptor, along with his blessing, as the 
two best things that he could bestow, and said nothing fur- 
ther, except to bid him farewell. 

When they had parted, however, the idea of Hilda’s con- 
version to Catholicism recurred to her lover’s mind, bring- 
ing with it certain reflections, that gave a new turn to his 
surmises about the mystery into which she had vanished. 
Not that he seriously apprehended — although the supera- 
bundance of her religious sentiment might mislead her for 
a moment — that the New England girl would permanently 
succumb to the scarlet superstitions which surrounded her 
in Italy. But the incident of the confessional — if known, 
as probably it was, to the eager propagandists who prowl 
about for souls, as cats to catch a mouse — ^would surely in- 
spire the most confident expectations of bringing her over 
to the faith. With so pious an end in view, would Jesuitical 
morality be shocked at the thought of kidnapping the mor- 
tal body, for the sake of the immortal spirit that might 
otherwise be lost forever? Would not the kind old priest, ' 
himself, deem this to be infinitely the kindest service that 
he could perform for the stray lamb, who had so strangely 
sought his aid? 

If these suppositions were well founded, Hilda was most 
likely a prisoner in one of the religious establishments 
that are so numerous in Rome. The idea, according to the 
aspect in which it was viewed, brought now a degree of 
comfort, and now an additional perplexity. On the one 
hand, Hilda was safe from any but spiritual assaults; on 

422 


THE FLIGHT OF HILDA’S DOVES 


the other, where was the possibility of breaking through 
all those barred portals, and searching a thousand convent- 
cells, to set her free? 

Kenyon, however, as it happened, was prevented from 
endeavoring to follow out this surmise, which only the state 
of hopeless uncertainty, that almost bewildered his reason, 
could have led him for a moment to entertain. A com- 
munication reached him by an unknown hand, in conse- 
quence of which, and within an hour after receiving it, he 
took his way through one of the gates of Rome. 


CHAPTER XLVI 


A Walk on the Campagna 

It was a bright forenoon of February; a month in which j 
the brief severity of a Roman winter is already past, and 
when violets and daisies begin to show themselves in spots li 
favored by the sun. The sculptor came out of the city by i; 
the gate of San Sebastiano, and walked briskly along the jj 
Appian Way. 

For the space of a mile or two beyond the gate, this 
ancient and famous road is as desolate and disagreeable 
as most of the other Roman avenues. It extends over 
small, uncomfortable paving-stones, between brick and 
plastered walls, which are very solidly constructed, and so 
high as almost to exclude a view of the surrounding country. , 
The houses are of most uninviting aspect, neither pictur- 
esque, nor homelike and social; they have seldom or never 
a door opening on the wayside, but are accessible only from ! 
the rear, and frown inhospitably upon the traveller through 
iron-grated windows. Here and there appears a dreary 
inn, or a wine-shop, designated by the withered bush beside 
the entrance, within which you discern a stone-built and 
sepulchral interior, where guests refresh themselves with 
sour bread and goats’-milk cheese, washed down with wine 
of dolorous acerbity. 

At frequent intervals along the roadside uprises the ruin 
of an ancient tomb. As they stand now, these structures are 
immensely high and broken mounds of conglomerated brick, 
stone, pebbles, and earth, all molten by time into a mass as 

424 


A WALK ON THE CAMPAGNA 


solid and indestructible as if each tomb were composed of 
a single bowlder of granite. When first erected, they were 
cased externally, no doubt, with slabs of polished marble, 
artfully wrought bas-reliefs, and all such suitable adorn- 
ments, and were rendered majestically beautiful by grand 
architectural designs. This antique splendor has long 
since been stolen from the dead, to decorate the palaces 
and churches of the living. Nothing remains to the dis- 
honored sepulchres, except their massiveness. 

Even the pyramids form hardly a stranger spectacle, 
or are more alien from human sympathies, than the tombs 
of the Appian Way, with their gigantic height, breadth, 
and solidity, defying time and the elements, and far too 
mighty to be demolished by an ordinary earthquake. Here 
you may see a modern dwelling, and a garden with its 
vines and olive-trees, perched on the lofty dilapidation of a 
tomb, which forms a precipice of fifty feet in depth on each 
of the four sides. There is a home on that funereal mound, 
where generations of children have been born, and succes- 
sive lives been spent, undisturbed by the ghost of the 
stern Roman whose ashes were so preposterously burdened. 
Other supulchres wear a crown of grass, shrubbery, and 
forest-trees, which throw out a broad sweep of branches, 
having had time, twice over, to be a thousand years of age. 
On one of them stands a tower, which, though immemorially 
more modern than the tomb, was itself built by immemorial 
hands, and is now rifted quite from top to bottom by a vast 
fissure of decay; the tomb-hillock, its foundation, being still 
as firm as ever, and likely to endure until the last trump 
shall rend it wide asunder, and summon forth its unknown 

I dead. 

Yes; its unknown dead! For, except in one or two 
doubtful instances, these mountainous sepulchral edifices 

1 have not availed to keep so much as the bare name of an 

i 425 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


individual or a family from oblivion. Ambitious of ever- 
lasting remembrance, as they were, the slumberers might 
just as well have gone quietly to rest, each in his pigeon- 
hole of a columbarium, or under his little green hillock, in a 
graveyard, without a headstone to mark the spot. It is 
rather satisfactory than otherwise, to think that all these 
idle pains have turned out so utterly abortive. 

About two miles, or more, from the city-gate, and right 
upon the roadside, Kenyon passed an immense round pile, 
supulchral in its original purposes, like those already men- 
tioned. It was built of great blocks of hewn stone, on a 
vast, square foundation of rough, agglomerated material, 
such as composes the mass of all the other ruinous tombs. 
But whatever might be the cause, it was in a far better state 
of preservation than they. On its broad summit rose the 
battlements of a mediaeval fortress, out of the midst of 
which (so long since had time begun to crumble the supple- 
mental structure, and cover it with soil, by means of way- 
side dust) grew trees, bushes, and thick festoons of ivy. 
This tomb of a woman had become the citadel and donjon- 
keep of a castle ; and all the care that Cecilia Metella’s hus- 
band could bestow, to secure endless peace for her beloved 
relics, had only sufficed to make that handful of precious 
ashes the nucleus of battles, long ages after her death. 

A little beyond this point, the sculptor turned aside from 
the Appian Way, and directed his course across the Cam- 
pagna, guided by tokens that were obvious only to him- 
self. On one side of him, but at a distance, the Claudian 
aqueduct was striding over fields and water-courses. Be- 
fore him, many miles away, with a blue atmosphere be- 
tween, rose the Alban hills, brilliantly silvered with snow 
and sunshine. 

He was not without a companion. A buffalo-calf, that 
seemed shy and sociable by the self-same impulse, had 

426 


A WALK ON THE CAMPAGNA 

begun to make acquaintance with him^ from the moment 
when he left the road. This frolicsome creature gambolled 
along, now before, now behind; standing a moment to gaze 
at him, with wild, curious eyes, he leaped aside and shook 
his shaggy head, as Kenyon advanced too nigh; then, after 
loitering in the rear, he came galloping up, like a charge of 
cavalry, but halted, all of a sudden, when the sculptor 
turned to look, and bolted across the Campagna, at the 
slightest signal of nearer approach. The young, sportive 
thing, Kenyon half fancied, was serving him as a guide, 
like the heifer that led Cadmus to the site of his destined 
city; for, in spite of a hundred vagaries, his general course 
was in the right direction, and along by several objects 
which the sculptor had noted as landmarks of his way. 

In this natural intercourse with a rude and healthy form 
of animal life, there was something that wonderfully re- 
vived Kenyon’s spirits. The warm rays of the sun, too, 
were wholesome for him in body and soul; and so was a 
breeze that bestirred itself occasionally, as if for the sole 
purpose of breathing upon his cheek, and dying softly 
away, when he would fain have felt a little more decided 
kiss. This shy, but loving, breeze reminded him strangely 
of what Hilda’s deportment had sometimes been towards 
himself. 

The weather had very much to do, no doubt, with these 
genial and delightful sensations that made the sculptor so 
happy with mere life, in spite of a head and heart full of 
doleful thoughts, anxieties, and fears, which ought in all 
reason to have depressed him. It was like no weather that 
exists anywhere, save in Paradise and in Italy; certainly 
not in America, where it is always too strenuous on the side 
either of heat or cold. Young as the season was, and wintry 
as it would have been under a more rigid sky, it resembled 
summer rather than what we New-Englanders recognize 

427 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


in our idea of spring. But there was an indescribable 
something, sweet, fresh, and remotely affectionate, which 
the matronly summer loses, and which thrilled, and, as it 
were, tickled Kenyon’s heart with a feeling partly of the 
senses, yet far more a spiritual delight. In a word, it was 
as if Hilda’s delicate breath were on his cheek. 

After walking at a brisk pace for about half an hour, 
he reached a spot where an excavation appeared to have 
been begun, at some not very distant period. There was a 
hollow space in the earth, looking exceedingly like a de- 
serted cellar, being enclosed within old subterranean walls, 
constructed of thin Roman bricks, and made accessible by 
a narrow flight of stone steps. A suburban villa had prob- 
ably stood over this site, in the imperial days of Rome, and 
these might have been the ruins of a bath-room, or some 
other apartment that was required to be wholly or partly 
under ground. A spade can scarcely be put into that soil, 
so rich in lost and forgotten things, without hitting upon 
some discovery which would attract all eyes in any other 
land. If you dig but a little way, you gather bits of pre- 
cious marble, coins, rings, and engraved gems; if you go 
deeper, you break into columbaria, or into sculptured and 
richly frescoed apartments that look like festive halls, but 
were only sepulchres. 

The sculptor descended into the cellar-like cavity, and 
sat down on a block of stone. His eagerness had brought 
him thither sooner than the appointed hour. The sunshine 
fell slantwise into the hollow, and happened to be resting 
on what Kenyon at first took to be a shapeless fragment of 
stone, possibly marble, which was partly concealed by the 
crumbling down of earth. 

But his practised eye was soon aware of something ar- 
tistic in this rude object. To relieve the anxious tedium of 
his situation, he cleared away some of the soil, which seemed 

428 


A WALK ON THE CAMPAGNA 

to have fallen very recently, and discovered a headless 
figure of marble. It was earth-stained, as well it might be, 
and had a slightly corroded surface, but at once impressed 
the sculptor as a Greek production, and wonderfully deli- 
cate and beautiful. The head was gone; both arms were 
broken off at the elbow. Protruding from the loose earth, 
however, Kenyon beheld the fingers of a marble hand; it 
was still appended to its arm, and a little further search 
enabled him to find the other. Placing these limbs in what 
the nice adjustment of the fractures proved to be their true 
position, the poor, fragmentary woman forthwith showed 
that she retained her modest instincts to the last. She had 
perished with them, and snatched them back at the moment 
of revival. For these long-buried hands immediately dis- 
posed themselves in the manner that nature prompts, as 
the antique artist knew, and as all the world has seen, in 
the Venus de’ Medici. 

*‘What a discovery is here!” thought Kenyon to himself. 
“I seek for Hilda, and find a marble woman! Is the omen 
good or ill.^” 

In a corner of the excavation lay a small round block of 
stone, much incrusted with earth that had dried and hard- 
ened upon it. So, at least, you would have described this 
i object, until the sculptor lifted it, turned it hither and 
thither in his hands, brushed off the clinging soil, and 
finally placed it on the slender neck of the newly discovered 
; statue. The effect was magical. It immediately lighted 
, up and vivified the whole figure, endowing it with 
i personality, soul, and intelligence. The beautiful Idea at 
^ once asserted its immortality, and converted that heap of 
I forlorn fragments into a whole, as perfect to the mind, if 
I not to the eye, as when the new marble gleamed with 
I snowy lustre; nor was the impression marred by the earth 
! that still hung upon the exquisitely graceful limbs, and 

429 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


even filled the lovely crevice of the lips. Kenyon cleared 
it away from between them^ and almost deemed himself re- 
warded with a living smile. 

It was either the prototype or a better repetition of the 
Venus of the Tribune. But those who have been dissatis- 
fied with the small head, the narrow, soulless face, the 
button-hole eyelids, of that famous statue, and its mouth i 
such as nature never moulded, should see the genial breadth : 
of this far nobler and sweeter countenance. It is one of ^ 
the few works of antique sculpture in which we recognize ! 
womanhood, and that, moreover, without prejudice to its i 
divinity. I 

Here, then, was a treasure for the sculptor to have ' 
found! How happened it to be lying there, beside its ^ 
grave of twenty centuries.^ Why were not the tidings of | 
its discovery already noised abroad? The world was richer ; 
than yesterday, by something far more precious than ! 
gold. Forgotten beauty had come back, as beautiful as ; 
ever; a goddesss had risen from her long slumber, and 
was a goddess still. Another cabinet in the Vatican was ; 
destined to shine as lustrously as that of the Apollo Belve- 
dere; or, if the aged pope should resign his claim, an em- 
peror would woo this tender marble, and win her as proudly ^ 
as an imperial bride! 

Such were the thoughts with which Kenyon exaggerated 
to himself the importance of the newly discovered statue, 
and strove to feel at least a portion of the interest which 
this event would have inspired in him a little while before. 
But, in reality, he found it difficult to fix his mind upon the 
subject. He could hardly, we fear, be reckoned a consum- 
mate artist, because there was something dearer to him than 
his art; and, by the greater strength of a human affection, 
the divine statue seemed to fall asunder again, and become 
only a heap of worthless fragments. 

430 


A WALK ON THE CAMPAGNA 


While the sculptor sat listlessly gazing at it, there was 
a sound of small hoofs, clumsily galloping on the Cam- 
pagna; and, soon, his frisky acquaintance, the buffalo-calf, 
came and peeped over the edge of the excavation. Almost 
at the same moment, he heard voices, which approached 
nearer and nearer; a man’s voice, and a feminine one, talk- 
ing the musical tongue of Italy. Besides the hairy visage 
of his four-footed friend, Kenyon now saw the figures of 
a peasant and a contadina, making gestures of salutation to 
him, on the opposite verge of the hollow space. 


431 


CHAPTER XLVII 
The Peasant and Contadina 

They descended into the excavation : a young peasant^ in 
the short blue j acket^ the small-clothes buttoned at the knee, 
and buckled shoes, that compose one of the ugliest dresses i 
ever vs^orn by man, except the wearer’s form have a grace 
which any garb, or the nudity of an antique statue, would 
equally set off ; and, hand in hand with him, a village girl, 
in one of those brilliant costumes largely kindled up with 
scarlet, and decorated with gold embroidery, in which the i 
contadinas array themselves on feast-days. But Kenyon | 
was not deceived; he had recognized the voices of his ! 
friends, indeed, even before their disguised figures came i 
between him and the sunlight. Donatello was the peasant; ! 
the contadina, with the airy smile, half mirthful, though it 
shone out of melancholy eyes, — ^was Miriam. 

They both greeted the sculptor with a familiar kindness 
which reminded him of the days when Hilda and they and 
he had lived so happily together, before the mysterious ad- : 
venture of the catacomb. What a succession of sinister 
events had followed one spectral figure out of that gloomy 
labyrinth. 

“It is carnival time, you know,” said Miriam, as if in 
explanation of Donatello’s and her own costume. “Do you 
remember how merrily we spent the Carnival, last year?” 

“It seems many years ago,” replied Kenyon. “We are 
all so changed !” 

When individuals approach one another with deep pur- 
4S2 


THE PEASANT AND CONTADINA 


poses on both sides, they seldom come at once to the matter 
which they have most at heart. They dread the electric 
shock of a too sudden contact with it. A natural impulse 
leads them to steal gradually onward, hiding themselves, 
as it were, behind a closer, and still a closer topic, until they 
stand face to face with the true point of interest. Miriam 
was conscious of this impulse, and partially obeyed it. 

“So, your instincts as a sculptor have brought you into 
the presence of our newly discovered statue,” she observed. 
“Is it not beautiful? A far truer image of immortal wom- 
anhood than the poor little damsel at Florence, world- 
famous though she be.” 

“Most beautiful,” said Kenyon, casting an indifferent 
glance at the Venus. “The time has been when the sight 
of this statue would have been enough to make the day 
memorable.” 

“And will it not do so, now?” Miriam asked. “I fancied 
so, indeed, when we discovered it two days ago. It is Dona- 
tello’s prize. We were sitting here together, planning an 
interview with you, when his keen eyes detected the fallen 
; goddess, almost entirely buried under that heap of earth, 

; which the clumsy excavators showered down upon her, I 
\ suppose. We congratulated ourselves, chiefly for your 
i sake. The eyes of us three are the only ones to which she 
has yet revealed herself. Does it not frighten you a little, 
like the apparition of a lovely woman that lived of old, 
and has long lain in the grave?” 

“Ah, Miriam! I cannot respond to you,” said the 
sculptor, with irrepressible impatience. “Imagination and 
the love of art have both died out of me.” 

“Miriam,” interposed Donatello, with gentle gravity, 
“why should we keep our friend in suspense? We know 
what anxiety he feels. Let us give him what intelligence 
we can.” 


433 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


“You are so direct and immediate_, my beloved friend!” 
answered Miriam with an unquiet smile. “There are sev- 
eral reasons why I should like to play round this matter a 
little while^ and cover it with fanciful thoughts, as we 
strew a grave with flowers.” 

“A grave!” exclaimed the sculptor. 

“No grave in which your heart need be buried,” she re- 
plied; “you have no such calamity to dread. But I linger 
and hesitate, because every word I speak brings me nearer 
to a crisis from which 1 shrink. Ah, Donatello! let us live 
a little longer the life of these last few days ! It is so bright, 
so airy, so childlike, so without either past or future! Here, 
on the wild Campagna, you seem to have found, both for 
yourself and me, the life that belonged to you in early 
youth; the sweet irresponsible life which you inherited from 
your mythic ancestry, the Fauns of Monte Beni. Our 
stern and black reality will come upon us speedily enough. 
But, first, a brief time more of this strange happiness.” 

“I dare not linger upon it,” answered Donatello, with an 
expression that reminded the sculptor of the gloomiest days 
of his remorse at Monte Beni. “I dare to be so happy as 
you have seen me, only because I have felt the time to be 
so brief.” 

“One day, then!” pleaded Miriam. “One more day in 
the wild freedom of this sweet-scented air.” 

“Well, one more day,” said Donatello, smiling; and his 
smile touched Kenyon with a pathos beyond words, there 
being gayety and sadness both melted into it; “but here is 
Hilda’s friend, and our own. Comfort him, at least, and 
set his heart at rest, since you have it partly in your power.” 

“Ah, surely he might endure his pangs a little longer!” 
cried Miriam, turning to Kenyon with a tricksy, fitful kind 
of mirth, that served to hide some solemn necessity, too sad 
and serious to be looked at in its naked aspect. “You love 

484 


THE PEASANT AND CONTADINA 

us both_, I think, and will be content to suffer for our sakes, 
one other day. Do I ask too much.^” 

“Tell me of Hilda/’ replied the sculptor; “tell me only 
that she is safe, and keep back what else you will.” 

“Hilda is safe,” said Miriam. “There is a Providence 
purposely for Hilda, as I remember to have told you long 
ago. But a great trouble — an evil deed, let us acknowledge 
it — has spread out its dark branches so widely, that the 
shadow falls on innocence as well as guilt. There was one 
slight link that connected your sweet Hilda with a crime 
which it was her unhappy fortune to witness, but of which 
I need not say she was as guiltless as the angels that looked 
out of heaven, and saw it too. No matter, now, what the 
consequence has been. You shall have your lost Hilda 
back, and — who knows? — ^perhaps tenderer than she was.” 

“But when will she return?” persisted the sculptor; 
“tell me the when, and where, and how!” 

“A little patience. Do not press me so,” said Miriam; 
and again Kenyon was struck by the spritelike, fitful 
characteristic of her manner, and a sort of hysteric gayety, 
which seemed to be a will-o’-the-wisp from a sorrow stag- 
nant at her heart. “You have more time to spare than I. 
First, listen to something that I have to tell. We will talk 
of Hilda by and by.” 

Then Miriam spoke of her own life, and told facts that 
threw a gleam of light over many things which had per- 
plexed the sculptor in all his previous knowledge of her. 
She described herself as springing from English parentage, 
on the mother’s side, but with a vein, likewise, of Jewish 
blood; yet connected, through her father, with one of those 
few princely families of Southern Italy, which still retain 
great wealth and influence. And she revealed a name, at 
which her auditor started, and grew pale; for it was one 
that, only a few years before, had been familiar to the 

435 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


world in connection with a mysterious and terrible event. 
The reader — if he think it worth while to recall some of 
the strange incidents which have been talked of, and 
forgotten, within no long time past — ^will remember 
Miriam’s name. 

“You shudder at me, I perceive,” said Miriam, suddenly 
interrupting her narrative. 

“No; you were innocent,” replied the sculptor. “I 
shudder at the fatality that seems to haunt your footsteps, 
and throws a shadow of crime about your path, you being 
guiltless.” 

“There was such a fatality,” said Miriam; “yes; the 
shadow fell upon me, innocent, but I went astray in it, and 
wandered — as Hilda could tell you — into crime.” 

She went on to say, that, while yet a child, she had lost 
her English mother. From a very early period of her 
life, there had been a contract of betrothal between herself 
and a certain marchese, the representative of another 
branch of her paternal house, — a family arrangement 
between two persons of disproportioned ages, and in which 
feeling went for nothing. Most Italian girls of noble rank 
would have yielded themselves to such a marriage, as an 
affair of course. But there was something in Miriam’s 
blood, in her mixed race, in her recollections of her 
mother, — some characteristic, finally, in her own nature, — 
which had given her freedom of thought, and force of 
will, and made this prearranged connection odious to her. 
Moreover, the character of her destined husband would 
have been a sufficient and insuperable objection; for it 
betrayed traits so evil, so treacherous, so vile, and yet so 
strangely subtle, as could only be accounted for by the 
insanity which often develops itself in old, close-kept races 
of men, when long unmixed with newer blood. Reaching 

436 


THE PEASANT AND CONTADINA 


the age when the marriage contract should have been 
fulfilled, Miriam had utterly repudiated it. 

Some time afterwards had occurred that terrible event 
to which Miriam had alluded, when she revealed her name; 
an event, the frightful and mysterious circumstances of 
which will recur to many minds, but of which few or none 
can have found for themselves a satisfactory explanation. 
It only concerns the present narrative, inasmuch as the 
suspicion of being at least an accomplice in the crime fell 
darkly and directly upon Miriam herself. 

“But you know that I am innocent !” she cried, interrupt- 
ing herself again, and looking Kenyon in the face. 

“I know it by my deepest consciousness,” he answered; 
“and I know it by Hilda’s trust and entire affection, which 
you never could have won had you been capable of guilt.” 

“That is sure ground, indeed, for pronouncing me inno- 
cent,” said Miriam with the tears gushing into her eyes. 
“Yet I have since become a horror to your saint-like Hilda, 
I by a crime which she herself saw me help to perpetrate !” 

She proceeded with her story. The great influence of 
\ her family connections had shielded her from some of 
j. the consequences of her imputed guilt. But, in her 
jl despair, she had fled from home, and had surrounded her 
j flight with such circumstances as rendered it the most 
probable conclusion that she had committed sucide. 
IVIiriam, however, was not of the feeble nature which takes 
1 advantage of that obvious and poor resource in earthly 

I difficulties. She flung herself upon the world, and speedily 
created a new sphere, in which Hilda’s gentle purity, the 
sculptor’s sensibility, clear thought, and genius, and 
Donatello’s genial simplicity, had given her almost her 
first experience of happiness. Then came that ill-omened 
adventure of the catacomb. The spectral figure which she 

437 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

encountered there was the evil fate that had haunted her 
through life. 

Looking back upon what had happened^ Miriam observed, 
she now considered him a madman. Insanity must have 
been mixed up with his original composition, and developed 
by those very acts of depravity which it suggested, and 
still more intensified, by the remorse that ultimately 
followed them. Nothing was stranger in his dark career 
than the penitence which often seemed to go hand in hand 
with crime. Since his death, she had ascertained that it 
finally led him to a convent, where his severe and self- 
inflicted penance had even acquired him the reputation 
of imusual sanctity, and had been the cause of his enjoying 
greater freedom than is commonly allowed to monks. 

“Need I tell jmu more.^” asked Miriam, after proceeding 
thus far. “It is still a dim and dreary mystery, a gloomy 
twilight into which I guide you; but possibly you may 
catch a glimpse of much that I myself can explain only 
by conjecture. At all events, you can comprehend what my 
situation must have been, after that fatal interview in the 
catacomb. My persecutor had gone thither for penance, 
but followed me forth with fresh impulses to crime. He 
had me in his power. Mad as he was, and wicked as he 
was, with one word he could have blasted me in the belief 
of all the world. In your belief too, and Hilda’s ! Even 
Donatello would have shrunk from me with horror!” 

“Never,” said Donatello, “my instinct would have known 
you innocent.” 

“Hilda and Donatello and myself, — we three would have 
acquitted you,” said Kenyon, “let the world say what it 
might. Ah, Miriam, you should have told us this sad story 
sooner !” 

“I thought often of revealing it to you,” answered 
Miriam; “on one occasion, especially, — it was after you 

438 


THE PEASANT AND CONTADINA 


had shown me your Cleopatra; it seemed to leap out of 
my heart, and got as far as my very lips. But finding you 
cold to accept my confidence, I thrust it back again. Had 
I obeyed my first impulse, all would have turned out 
differently.” 

“And Hilda!” resumed the sculptor. “What can have 
been her connection with these dark incidents.^” 

“She will, doubtless, tell you with her own lips,” replied 
Miriam. “Through sources of information which I possess 
in Rome, I can assure you of her safety. In two days 
more — by the help of the special Providence that, as I love 
to tell you, watches over Hilda — she shall rejoin you.” 

“Still two days more!” murmured the sculptor. 

“Ah, you are cruel now! More cruel than you know!” 
exclaimed Miriam, with another gleam of that fantastic, 
fitful gayety, which had more than once marked her 
manner, during this interview. “Spare your poor friends !” 

“I know not what you mean, Miriam,” said Kenyon. 

“No matter,” she replied; “you will understand here- 
after. But could you think it.^ Here is Donatello haunted 
with strange remorse, and an unmitigable resolve to obtain 
what he deems justice upon himself. He fancies, with a 
kind of direct simplicity, which I have vainly tried to 
combat, that, when a wrong has been done, the doer is 
bound to submit himself to whatsoever tribunal takes 
cognizance of such things, and abide its judgrdent. I have 
assured him that there is no such thing as earthly justice, 
and especially none here, under the head of Christendom.” 

“We will not argue the point again,” said Donatello, 
smiling. “I have no Jiead for argument, but only a sense, 
an impulse, an instinct, I believe, which sometimes leads 
me right. But why do we talk now of what may make us 
sorrowful.^ There are still two days more. Let us be 
happy !” 


439 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


It appeared to Kenyon that since he last saw Donatello, 
some of the sweet and delightful characteristics of the 
antique Faun had returned to him. There were slight, 
careless graces, pleasant and simple peculiarities, that had 
been obliterated by the heavy grief through which he was 
passing at Monte Beni, and out of which he had hardly 
emerged, when the sculptor parted with Miriam and him 
beneath the bronze pontiff’s outstretched hand. These 
happy blossoms had now reappeared. A playfulness came 
out of his heart, and glimmered like firelight in his actions, 
alternating, or even closely intermingled, with profound 
sympathy and serious thought. 

“Is he not beautiful.^” said Miriam, watching the sculp- 
tor’s eye as it dwelt admiringly on Donatello. “So changed^ 
yet still, in a deeper sense, so much the same! He has 
travelled in a circle, as all things heavenly and earthly do, 
and now comes back to his original self, with an inestimable 
treasure of improvement won from an experience of pain. 
How wonderful is this ! I tremble at my own thoughts, yet 
must needs probe them to their depths. Was the crime — 
in which he and I were wedded — ^was it a blessing, in that 
strange disguise? Was it a means of education, bringing 
a simple and imperfect nature to a point of feeling and 
intelligence which it could have reached under no other 
discipline ?” 

“You stir up deep and perilous matter, Miriam,” replied 
Kenyon. “I dare not follow you into the unfathomable 
abysses whither you are tending.” 

“Yet there is a pleasure in them! I delight to brood 
on the verge of this great mystery,” returned she. “The 
story of the fall of man! Is it not repeated in our romance 
of Monte Beni? And may we follow the analogy yet 
further? Was that very sin, — into which Adam precipi- 
tated himself and all his race, — was it the destined means 

440 


THE PEASANT AND CONTADINA 


by which^ over a long pathway of toil and sorrow, we are 
to attain a higher, brighter, and profounder happiness, 
than our lost birthright gave? Will not this idea account 
for the permitted existence of sin, as no other theory can?” 

“It is too dangerous, Miriam! I cannot follow you!” 
repeated the sculptor. “Mortal man has no right to tread 
on the ground where you now set your feet.” 

“Ask Hilda what she thinks of it,” said Miriam, with 
a thoughtful smile. “At least, she might conclude that 
sin — which man chose instead of good — has been so benefi- 
cently handled by omniscience and omnipotence, that, 
whereas our dark enemy sought to destroy us by it, it has 
really become an instrument most effective in the education 
of intellect and soul.” 

Miriam paused a little longer among these meditations, 
which the sculptor rightly felt to be so perilous; she then 
pressed his hand, in token of farewell. 

“The day after to-morrow,” said she, “an hour before 
sunset, go to the Corso, and stand in front of the fifth 
house on your left, beyond the Antonine column. You 
will learn tidings of a friend.” 

Kenyon would have besought her for more definite 
intelligence, but she shook her head, put her finger on 
her lips, and turned away with an illusive smile. The 
fancy impressed him, that she, too, like Donatello, had 
reached a wayside paradise, in their mysterious life- 
journey, where they both threw down the burden of the 
before and after, and, except for this interview with 
himself, were happy in the flitting moment. To-day, 
Donatello was the sylvan Faun; to-day, Miriam was his 
fit companion, a Nymph of grove or fountain; to-morrow, — 
a remorseful man and woman, linked by a marriage-bond 
of crime, — they would set forth towards an inevitable goal. 


441 


CHAPTER XLVIII 
A Scene in the Cor so 

On the appointed afternoon^ Kenyon failed not to 
make his appearance in the Corso^ and at an hour much 
earlier than Miriam had named. 

It was carnival time. The merriment of this famous 
festival was in full progress; and the stately avenue of 
the^Corso was peopled with hundreds of fantastic shapes, 
some of which probably represented the mirth of ancient 
times, surviving through all manner of calamity, ever 
since the days of the Roman Empire. For a few after- 
noons of early spring, this mouldy gayety strays into the 
sunshine; all the remainder of the year, it seems to be shut 
up in the catacombs or some other sepulchral storehouse 
of the past. 

Besides these hereditary forms, at which a hundred 
generations have laughed, there were others of modern 
date, the humorous effluence of the day that was now 
passing. It was a day, however, and an age, that appears 
to be remarkably barren, when compared with the prolific 
originality of former times, in productions of a scenic 
and ceremonial character, whether grave or gay. To own 
the truth, the Carnival is alive, this present year, only 
because it has existed through centuries gone by. It is 
traditionary, not actual. If decrepit and melancholy Rome 
smiles, and laughs broadly, indeed, at carnival time, it is 
not in the old simplicity of real mirth, but with a half- 
conscious effort, like our self-deceptive pretence of jollity 

442 


A SCENE IN THE CORSO 

at a threadbare joke. Whatever it may once have been, 
it is now but a narrow stream of merriment, noisy of set 
purpose, running along the middle of the Corso, through 
the solemn heart of the decayed city, without extending 
its shallow influence on either side. Nor, even within its 
own limits, does it affect the mass of spectators, but only 
a comparatively few, in street and balcony, who carry on 
the warfare of nosegays and counterfeit sugar-plums. The 
populace look on with staid composure; the nobility and 
priesthood take little or no part in the matter; and, but 
for the hordes of Anglo-Saxons who annually take up the 
flagging mirth, the Carnival might long ago have been 
swept away, with the snow-drifts of confetti that whiten 
all the pavement. 

No doubt, however, the worn-out festival is still new 
to the youthful and light-hearted, who make the worn-out 
world itself as fresh as Adam found it on his first forenoon 
in Paradise. It may be only age and care that chill the 
life out of its grotesque and airy riot, with the impertinence 
of their cold criticism. 

Kenyon, though young, had care enough within his 
breast to render the Carnival the emptiest of mockeries. 
Contrasting the stern anxiety of his present mood with 
the frolic spirit of the preceding year, he fancied that so 
much trouble had, at all events, brought wisdom in its 
train. But there is a wisdom that looks grave, and sneers 
at merriment; and again a deeper wisdom, that stoops to 
be gay as often as occasion serves, and oftenest avails itself 
of shallow and trifling grounds of mirth; because, if we 
wait for more substantial ones, we seldom can be gay at 
all. Therefore, had it been possible, Kenyon would have 
done well to mask himself in some wild, hairy visage, and 
plunge into the throng of other maskers, as at the Carnival 
before. Then, Donatello had danced along the Corso in 

443 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


all the equipment of a Faun^ doing the part with wonderful ; 
felicity of execution, and revealing furry ears, which! 
looked absolutely real; and Miriam had been, alternately,! 
a lady of the antique regime, in powder and brocade, and| 
the prettiest peasant-girl of the Campagna, in the gayest < 
of costumes ; while Hilda, sitting demurely in a balcony, 
had hit the sculptor with a single rose-bud, — so sweet 
and fresh a bud that he knew at once whose hand had 
flung it. 

These were all gone; all those dear friends whose sym- 
pathetic mirth had made him gay. Kenyon felt as if an 
interval of many years had passed since the last Carnival. 
He had grown old, the nimble jollity was tame, and the 
maskers dull and heavy; the Corso was but a narrow and 
shabby street of decaying palaces ; and even the long, blue 
streamer of Italian sky, above it, not half so brightly blue 
as formerly. 1 

Yet, if he could have beheld the scene with his clear, | 
natural eyesight, he might still have found both merriment j 
and splendor in it. Everywhere, and all day long, there 
had been tokens of the festival, in the baskets brimming 
over with bouquets, for sale at the street-corners, or borne 
about on people’s heads; while bushels upon bushels of 
variously colored confetti were displayed, looking just like 
veritable sugar-plums ; so that a stranger would have 
imagined that the whole commerce and business of stern 
old Rome lay in flowers and sweets. And, now, in the 
sunny afternoon, there could hardly be a spectacle more 
picturesque than the vista of that noble street, stretching 
into the interminable distance between two rows of lofty 
edifices, from every window of which, and many a balcony, 
flaunted gay and gorgeous carpets, bright silks, scarlet 
cloths with rich golden fringes, and Gobelin tapestry, still 
lustrous with varied hues, though the product of antique 


A SCENE IN THE CORSO 


l<X)ms. Each separate palace had put on a gala-dress^ and 
looked festive for the occasion, whatever sad or guilty 
secret it might hide within. Every window, moreover, was 
alive with the faces of women, rosy girls, and children, all 
kindled into brisk and mirthful expression, by the incidents 
in the street below. In the balconies that projected along 
‘ the palace fronts stood groups of ladies, some beautiful, all 
richly dressed, scattering forth their laughter, shrill, yet 
sweet, and the musical babble of their voices, to thicken 
■ into an airy tumult over the heads of common mortals, 
f All these innumerable eyes looked down into the street, 
the whole capacity of which was thronged with festal 
figures, in such fantastic variety that it had taken centuries 
to contrive them; and through the midst of the mad, merry 
stream of human life, rolled slowly onward a never-ending 
procession of all the vehicles in Rome, from the ducal 
carriage, with the powdered coachman high in front, and 
the three golden lackeys, clinging in the rear, down to 
the rustic cart drawn by its single donkey. Among this 
various crowd, at windows and in balconies, in cart, cab, 
barouche, or gorgeous equipage, or bustling to and fro 
afoot, there was a sympathy of nonsense; a true and genial 
brotherhood and sisterhood, based on the honest purpose — 
and a wise one, too — of being foolish, all together. The 
sport of mankind, like its deepest earnest, is a battle; so 
these festive people fought one another with an ammunition 
of sugar-plums and flowers. 

Not that they were veritable sugar-plums, however, but 
something that resembled them only as the apples of 
Sodom look like better fruit. They were concocted mostly 
of lime, with a grain of oat, or some other worthless 
kernel, in the midst. Besides the hail-storm of confetti, 
the combatants threw handfuls of flour or lime into the 
air, where it hung like smoke over a battle-field, or, 

445 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


descending, whitened a black coat or priestly robe, and j 
made the curly locks of youth irreverently hoary. 

At the same time with this acrid contest of quick-lime, i 
which caused much effusion of tears from suffering eyes, 
a gentler warfare of flowers was carried on, principally, 
between knights and ladies. Originally, no doubt, when tj 
this pretty custom was first instituted, it may have had a 
sincere and modest import. Each youth and damsel, gath- ! 
ering bouquets of field-flowers, or the sweetest and fairest [ 
that grew in their own gardens, all fresh and virgin 
blossoms, flung them, with true aim, at the one, or few, j 
whom they regarded with a sentiment of shy partiality 
at least, if not with love. Often, the lover in the Corsof 
may thus have received from his bright mistress, in her| 
father’s princely balcony, the first sweet intimation thati 
his passionate glances had not struck against a heart of | 
marble. What more appropriate mode of suggesting her I 
tender secret could a maiden find than by the soft hit of j 
a rose-bud against a young man’s cheek. j 

This was the pastime and the earnest of a more innocent i? 
and homelier age. Nowadays, the nosegays are gathered i 


and tied up by sordid hands, chiefly of the most ordinary jl 
flowers, and are sold along the Corso, at mean price, yet | 


more than such venal things are worth. Buying a basket- 
ful, you find them miserably wilted, as if they had flown 
hither and thither through two or three carnival days 
already; muddy, too, having been fished up from the 
pavement, where a hundred feet have trampled on them. 
You may see throngs of men 



selves beneath the horses’ hoofs to gather up bouquets 
that were aimed amiss from balcony and carriage; these 
they sell again, and yet once more, and ten times over, 
defiled as they all are with the wicked filth of Rome. 

Such are the flowery favors — ^the fragrant bunches of 


446 


A SCENE IN THE CORSO 


sentiment — ^that fly between cavalier and dapie, and back 
again, from one end of the Corso to the other. Perhaps 
they may symbolize, more aptly than was intended, the 
. poor, battered, wilted hearts of those who fling them; 
j hearts which — crumpled and crushed by former possessors, 
and stained with various mishap — have been passed from 
hand to hand along the muddy street-way of life, instead 
of being treasured in one faithful bosom. 

These venal and polluted flowers, therefore, and those 
deceptive bonbons, are types of the small reality that still 
subsists in the observance of the Carnival. Yet the govern- 
ment seemed to imagine that there might be excitement 
enough, — ^wild mirth, perchance, following its antics beyond 
Sf law, and frisking from frolic into earnest, — to render it 
expedient to guard the Corso with an imposing show of 
military power. Besides the ordinary force of gendarmes, 
a strong patrol of papal dragoons, in steel helmets and 
white cloaks, were stationed at all the street-corners. 
Detachments of French infantry stood by their stacked 
muskets in the Piazza del Popolo, at one extremity of the 
course, and before the palace of the Austrian embassy, at 
the other, and by the column of Antoninus, midway 
between. Had that chained tiger-cat, the Roman populace, 
shown only so much as the tip of his claws, the sabres 
would have been flashing and the bullets whistling, in right 
I earnest, among the combatants who now pelted one another 
* with mock sugar-plums and wilted flowers. 

I But, to do the Roman people justice, they were re- 
strained by a better safeguard than the sabre or the bay- 
onet; it was their own gentle courtesy, which imparted 
a sort of sacredness to the hereditary festival. At first 
sight of a spectacle so fantastic and extravagant, a cool 
observer might have imagined the whole town gone mad; 
but in the end, he would see that all this apparently un- 

447 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


bounded licepse is kept strictly within a limit of its own; 
he would admire a people who can so freely let loose their 
mirthful propensities^ while muzzling those fiercer ones 
that tend to mischief. Everybody seemed lawless; nobody 
was rude. If any reveller overstepped the mark, it was 
sure to be no Roman, but an Englishman or an American; 
and even the rougher play of this Gothic race was still 
softened by the insensible influence of a moral atmosphere 
more delicate, in some respects, than we breathe at home. 
Not that, after all, we like the fine Italian spirit better 
than our own; popular rudeness is sometimes the symptom 
of rude moral health. But, where Carnival is in question, 
it would probably pass off more decorously, as well as 
more airily and delightfully, in Rome, than in any Anglo- 
Saxon city. 

When Kenyon emerged from a side-lane into the Corso, 
the mirth was at its height. Out of the seclusion of his 
own feelings, he looked forth at the tapestried and damask- 
curtained palaces, the slow-moving, double line of carriages, 
and the motley maskers that swarmed on foot, as if he were 
gazing through the iron lattice of a prison-window. So 
remote from the scene were his sympathies, that it aflTected 
him like a thin dream, through the dim, extravagant mate- 
rial of which he could discern more substantial objects, 
while too much under its control to start forth broad awake. 
Just at that moment, too, there came another spectacle, 
making its way right through the masquerading throng. 

It was, first and foremost, a full band of martial music, 
reverberating, in that narrow and confined, though stately 
avenue, between the walls of the lofty palaces, and roar- 
ing upward to the sky, with melody so powerful that it 
almost grew to discord. Next came a body of cavalry and 
mounted gendarmes, with great display of military pomp. 
They were escorting a long train of equipages, each and 

448 


A SCENE IN THE CORSO 

all of which shone as gorgeously as Cinderella’s coach, 
with paint and gilding. Like that, too, they were provided 
with coachmen, of mighty breadth, and enormously tall 
footmen, in immense, powdered wigs, and all the splendor 
of gold-laced, three-cornered hats, and embroidered silk 
coats and breeches. By the old-fashioned magnificence of 
this procession, it might worthily have included his Holi- 
ness in person, with a suite of attendant Cardinals, if those 
sacred dignitaries would kindly have lent their aid to 
heighten the frolic of the Carnival. But, for all its show 
of a martial escort, and its antique splendor of costume, 
it was but a train of the municipal authorities of Rome, — 
illusive shadows, every one, and among them a phantom, 
styled the Roman Senator, — proceeding to the Capitol. 

The riotous interchange of nosegays and confetti was 
partially suspended, while the procession passed. One 
well-directed shot, however, — it was a double handful of 
powdered lime, flung by an impious New-Englander, — hit 
the coachman of the Roman Senator full in the face, and 
hurt his dignity amazingly. It appeared to be his opinion, 
that the Republic was again crumbling into ruin, and that 
the dust of it now filled his nostrils; though, in fact, it 
would hardly be distinguished from the official powder with 
which he was already plentifully bestrewn. 

While the sculptor, with his dreamy eyes, was taking 
idle note of this trifling circumstance, two figures passed 
before him, hand in hand. The countenance of each was 
covered with an impenetrable black mask; but one seemed 
a peasant of the Campagna; the other, a contadina in her 
holiday costume. 


449 


CHAPTER XLIX 


A Frolic of the Carnival 

The crowd and confusion, just at that moment, hindered 
the sculptor from pursuing these figures, — the peasant and 
contadina, — who, indeed, were but two of a numerous tribe 
that thronged the Corso, in similar costume. As soon as 
he could squeeze a passage, Kenyon tried to follow in their 
footsteps, but quickly lost sight of them, and was thrown 
off the track by stopping to examine various groups of mas- 
queraders, in which he fancied the objects of his search 
to be included. He found many a sallow peasant or herds- 
man of the Campagna, in such a dress as Donatello wore; 
many a contadina, too, brown, broad, and sturdy, in her 
finery of scarlet, and decked out with gold or coral beads,! 
a pair of heavy ear-rings, a curiously wrought cameo or 
mosaic brooch, and a silver comb or long stiletto among her 
glossy hair. But those shapes of grace and beauty, which 
he sought, had vanished. 

As soon as the procession of the Senator had passed, the 
merrymakers resumed their antics with fresh spirit, and 
the artillery of bouquets and sugar-plums, suspended for 
a moment, began anew. The sculptor himself, being prob- 
ably the most anxious and unquiet spectator there, was 
especially a mark for missiles from all quarters, and for 
the practical jokes which the license of the Carnival per- 
mits. In fact, his sad and contracted brow so ill accorded 
with the scene, that the revellers might be pardoned for 
thus using him as the butt of their idle mirth, since he 
evidently could not otherwise contribute to it. 

450 


A FROLIC OF THE CARNIVAL 


Fantastic figures, with bulbous heads, the circumference 
of a bushel, grinned enormously in his face. Harlequins 
struck him with their wooden swords, and appeared to 
expect his immediate transformation into some jollier shape. 
A little, long-tailed, horned fiend sidled up to him, and sud- 
denly blew at him through a tube, enveloping our poor 
friend in a whole harvest of winged seeds. A biped, with 
an ass’s snout, brayed close to his ear, ending his discord- 
ant uproar with a peal of human laughter. Five strap- 
ping damsels — so, at least, their petticoats bespoke them, 
in spite of an awful freedom in the flourish of their legs — 
joined hands, and danced around him, inviting him by their 
gestures to perform a hornpipe in the midst. Released 
from these gay persecutors, a clown in motley rapped him 
on the back with a blown bladder, in which a handful of 
dried peas rattled horribly. 

Unquestionably, a care-stricken mortal has no business 
abroad, when the rest of mankind are at high carnival ; they 
must either pelt him and absolutely martyr him with jests, 
and finally bury him beneath the aggregate heap ; or else the 
potency of his darker mood, because the tissue of human 
life takes a sad dye more readily than a gay one, will quell 
their holiday humors, like the aspe^ of a death’s-head at 
a banquet. Only that we know Kenyon’s errand, we could 
hardly forgive him for venturing into the Corso with that 
troubled face. 

Even yet, his merry martyrdom was not half over. There 
came along a gigantic female figure, seven feet high, at 
least, and taking up a third of the street’s breadth with the 
preposterously swelling sphere of her crinoline skirts. 
Singling out the sculptor, she began to make a ponderous 
assault upon his heart, throwing amorous glances at him 
out of her great goggle-eyes, offering him a vast bouquet of 
sunflowers and nettles, and soliciting his pity by all sorts of 

451 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


pathetic and passionate dumb-show. Her suit meeting no < 
favor, the rejected Titaness made a gesture of despair and ■ 
rage ; then suddenly drawing a huge pistol, she took aim | 
right at the obdurate sculptor’s breast, and pulled the 1 
trigger. The shot took effect, for the abominable plaything j 
went off by a spring, like a boy’s popgun, covering Kenyon f 
with a cloud of lime-dust, under shelter of which the re- j 
vengeful damsel strode away. j 

Hereupon, a whole host of absurd figures surrounded 
him pretending to sympathize in his mishap. Clowns and 
party-colored harlequins; orang-outangs; bear-headed, bull- 
headed, and dog-headed individuals; faces that would have 
been human, but for their enormous noses; one terrific crea- 
ture, with a visage right in the centre of his breast; and all 
other imaginable kinds of monstrosity and exaggeration. 
These apparitions appeared to be investigating the case, 
after the fashion of a coroner’s jury, poking their paste- | 
board countenances close to the sculptor’s with an unchange- i 
able grin, that gave still more ludicrous effect to the comic 
alarm and sorrow of their gestures. Just then, a figure came 
by, in a gray wig and rusty gown, with an inkhorn at his I 
button-hole, and a pen behind his ear ; he announced himself 
as a notary, and offered to make the last will and testament fl 
of the assassinated man. This solemn duty, however, was | 
interrupted by a surgeon, who brandished a lancet, three j 
feet long, and proposed to him to let him take blood. 

The affair was so like a feverish dream, that Kenyon re- 
signed himself to let it take its course. Fortunately the | 
humors of the Carnival pass from one absurdity to another, I 
without lingering long enough on any, to wear out even the j 
slightest of them. The passiveness of his demeanor afforded i 
too little scope for such broad merriment as the masque- 
raders sought. In a few moments they vanished from him, 
as dreams and spectres do, leaving him at liberty to pursue 

452 


A FROLIC OF THE CARNIVAL 


his quest, with no impediment except the crowd that blocked 
up the footway. 

He had not gone far when the peasant and the contadina 
met him. They were still hand in hand, and appeared to be 
straying through the grotesque and animated scene, taking 
as little part in it as himself. It might be because he recog- 
nized them, and knew their solemn secret, that the sculptor 
fancied a melancholy emotion to be expressed by the very 
movement and attitudes of these two figures; and even the 
grasp of their hands, uniting them so closely, seemed to set 
them in a sad remoteness from the world at which they 
gazed. 

“I rejoice to meet you,” said Kenyon. 

But they looked at him through the eye-holes of their 
black masks, without answering a word. 

“Pray give me a little light on the matter which I have 
so much at heart,” said he ; “if you know anything of Hilda, 
for Heaven’s sake, speak!” 

Still, they were silent; and the sculptor began to imagine 
that he must have mistaken the identity of these figures, 
there being such a multitude in similar costume. Yet there 
was no other Donatello, no other Miriam. He felt, too, 
that spiritual certainty which impresses us with the pres- 
ence of our friends, apart from any testimony of the senses. 

“You are unkind,” resumed he, — “knowing the anxiety 
which oppresses me, — not to relieve it, if in your power.” 

The reproach evidently had its effect; for the contadina 
now spoke, and it was Miriam’s voice. 

“We gave you all the light we could,” said she. “You 
are yourself unkind, though you little think how much so, 
to come between us at this hour. There may be a sacred 
hour, even in carnival time.” 

In another state of mind, Kenyon could have been amused 
by the impulsiveness of this response, and a sort of vivacity 

453 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


that he had often noted in Miriam’s conversation. But he 
was conscious of a profound sadness in her tone, overpow- 
ering its momentary irritation, and assuring him that a pale, 
tear-stained face was hidden behind her mask. 

“Forgive me!” said he. 

Donatello here extended his hand — not that which was 
clasping Miriam’s — and she, too, put her free one into the 
sculptor’s left; so that they were a linked circle of three, 
with many reminiscences and forebodings flashing through 
their hearts. Kenyon knew intuitively that these once fa- 
miliar friends were parting with him, now. 

“Farewell!” they all three said, in the same breath. 

No sooner was the word spoken, than they loosed their 
hands; and the uproar of the Carnival swept like a tempes- 
tuous sea over the spot, which they had included within their 
small circle of isolated feeling. 

By this interview, the sculptor had learned nothing in 
reference to Hilda; but he understood that he was to adhere 
to the instructions already received, and await a solution of 
the mystery in some mode that he could not yet anticipate. 
Passing his hands over his eyes, and looking about him, — 
for the event just described had made the scene even more 
dreamlike than before, — he now found himself approach- 
ing that broad piazza bordering on the Corso, which has for 
its central object the sculptured column of Antoninus. It 
was not far from this vicinity that Miriam had bid him wait. 
Struggling onward, as fast as the tide of merrymakers set- 
ting strong against him, would permit, he was now beyond 
the Palazzo Colonna, and began to count the houses. The 
fifth was a palace, with a long front upon the Corso, and of 
stately height, but somewhat grim with age. 

Over its arched and pillared entrance there was a balcony, 
richly hung with tapestry and damask, and tenanted, for 
the time, by a gentleman of venerable aspect, and a group 

454 


A FROLIC OF THE CARNIVAL 

of ladies. The white hair and whiskers of the former, and 
the winter-roses in his cheeks, had an English look; the 
ladies, too, showed a fair-haired Saxon bloom, and seemed 
to taste the mirth of the Carnival with the freshness of spec- 
tators to whom the scene was new. All the party, the old 
gentleman with grave earnestness, as if he were defending 
a rampart, and his young companions with exuberance of 
frolic, showered confetti inexhaustibly upon the passers-by. 

In the rear of the balcony, a broad-brimmed, ecclesiastical 
beaver was visible. An abbate, probably an acquaintance 
and cicerone of the English family, was sitting there, and 
enjoying the scene, though partially withdrawn from view, 
as the decorum for his order dictated. 

There seemed no better nor other course for Kenyon, than 
to keep watch at this appointed spot, waiting for whatever 
should happen next. Clasping his arm round a lamp-post, 
to prevent being carried away by the turbulent stream of 
wayfarers, he scrutinized every face, with the idea that some 
one of them might meet his eyes with a glance of intelli- 
gence. He looked at each mask, — harlequin, ape, bulbous- 
headed monster, or anything that was absurdest, — not know- 
ing but that the messenger might come, even in such fantas- 
tic guise. Or, perhaps, one of those quaint figures, in the 
stately ruff, the cloak, tunic, and trunk-hose, of three cen- 
turies ago, might bring him tidings of Hilda, out of that 
long-past age. At times, his disquietude took a hopeful as- 
pect; and he fancied that Hilda might come by, her own 
sweet self, in some shy disguise which the instinct of his 
love would be sure to penetrate. Or, she might be borne 
past on a triumphal car, like the one just now approaching, 
its slow-moving wheels encircled and spoked with foliage, 
and drawn by horses, that were harnessed and wreathed 
with flowers. Being, at best, so far beyond the bounds of 
reasonable conjecture, he might anticipate the wildest event, 

455 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


or find either his hopes or fears disappointed in what ap- 
peared most probable. 

The old Englishman and his daughters, in the opposite 
balcony, must have seen something unutterably absurd in 
the sculptor’s deportment, poring into this whirlpool of non- 
sense so earnestly, in quest of what was to make his life 
dark or bright. Earnest people, who try to get a reality 
out of human existence, are necessarily absurd in the view 
of the revellers and masqueraders. At all events, after a 
good deal of mirth at the expense of his melancholy visage, 
the fair occupants of the balcony favored Kenyon with a 
salvo of confetti, which came rattling about him like a hail- 
storm. Looking up, instinctively, he was surprised to see 
the abbate in the background lean forward and give a cour- 
teous sign of recognition. 

It was the same old priest with whom he had seen Hilda, 
at the confessional; the same with whom he had talked of 
her disappearance on meeting him in the street. 

Yet, whatever might be the reason, Kenyon did not now 
associate this ecclesiastical personage with the idea of 
Hilda. His eyes lighted on the old man, just for an instant, 
and then returned to the eddying throng of the Corso, on 
his minute scrutiny of which depended, for aught he knew, 
the sole chance of ever finding any trace of her. There 
was, about this moment, a bustle on the other side of the 
street, the cause of which Kenyon did not see, nor exert him- 
self to discover. A small party of soldiers or gendarmes 
appeared to be concerned in it; they were perhaps arresting 
some disorderly character, who, under the influence of an 
extra flask of wine, might have reeled across the mystic lim- 
itation of carnival proprieties. 

The sculptor heard some people near him talking of the 
incident. 


456 


A FROLIC OF THE CARNIVAL 


“That contadina, in a black mask^ was a fine figure of a 
woman.” 

“She was not amiss,” replied a female voice; “but her 
companion was far the handsomer figure of the two. Could 
they be really a peasant and a contadina, do you imagine?” 

“No, no,” said the other. “It is some frolic of the Car- 
nival, carried a little too far.” 

This conversation might have excited Kenyon’s interest; 
only that, just as the last words were spoken, he was hit 
by two missiles, both of a kind that were flying abundantly 
on that gay battle-field. One, we are ashamed to say, was 
a cauliflower, which, flung by a young man from a pass- 
ing carriage, came with a prodigious thump against his 
shoulder; the other was a single rose-bud so fresh that it 
seemed that moment gathered. It flew from the opposite 
balcony, smote gently on his lips, and fell into his hand. 
He looked upward and beheld the face of his lost Hilda! 

She was dressed in a white domino, and looked pale and 
bewildered, and yet full of tender joy. Moreover, there 
was a gleam of delicate mirthfulness in her eyes, which the 
sculptor had seen there only two or three times in the course 
of their acquaintance, but thought it the most bewitching 
and fairy-like of all Hilda’s expressions. That soft, mirth- 
ful smile caused her to melt, as it were, into the wild frolic 
of the Carnival, and become not so strange and alien to the 
scene as her unexpected apparition must otherwise have 
made her. 

Meanwhile, the venerable Englishman and his daughters 
were staring at poor Hilda in a way that proved them al- 
together astonished, as well as inexpressibly shocked, by her 
sudden intrusion into their private balcony. They looked, — 
as indeed, English people of respectability would, if an 
angel were to alight in their circle without due introduction 
from somebody whom they knew, in the court above, — they 

457 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


looked as if an unpardonable liberty had been taken and a ■ 
suitable apology must be made; after which the intruder I 
would be expected to withdraw. 

The abbate^ however^ drew the old gentleman aside and i 
whispered a few words that served to mollify him; he be- | 
stowed on Hilda a sufficiently benignant^ though still a per- I 
plexed and questioning regard, and invited her, in dumb- 
show, to put herself at her ease. 

But, whoever was in fault, our shy and gentle Hilda had 
dreamed of no intrusion. Whence she had come, or where 
she had been hidden, during this mysterious interval we can 
but imperfectly surmise, and do not mean, at present, to 
make it a matter of formal explanation with the reader. It 
is better, perhaps, to fancy that she had been snatched away 
to a land of picture; that she had been straying with Claude 
in the golden light which he used to shed over his land- 
scapes, but which he could never have beheld with his 
waking eyes till he awoke in the better clime. We will i 
imagine that, for the sake of the true simplicity with which j 
she loved them, Hilda had been permitted, for a season, to | 
converse with the great departed masters of the pencil, and i 
behold the diviner works which they have painted in | 
heavenly colors. Guido had shown her another portrait of 
Beatrice Cenci, done from the celestial life, in which that | 
forlorn mystery of the earthly countenance was exchanged 
for a radiant joy. Perugino had allowed her a glimpse at 
his easel, on which she discerned what seemed a woman’s 
face, but so divine, by the very depth and softness of 
its womanhood, that a gush of happy tears blinded the ’ 
maiden’s eyes before she had time to look. Raphael had ' 
taken Hilda by the hand, — that fine, forcible hand which 
Kenyon sculptured, — and drawn aside the curtain of gold- 
fringed cloud that hung before his latest masterpiece. On 
earth, Raphael painted the Transfiguration. What higher 

458 


A FROLIC OF THE CARNIVAL 


scene may he have since depleted, not from imagination, but 
as revealed to his actual sight ! 

Neither will we retrace the steps by which she returned 
to the actual world. For the present, be it enough to say 
that Hilda had been summoned forth from a secret place, 
and led we know not through what mysterious passages, to 
a point where the tumult of life burst suddenly upon her 
ears. She heard the tramp of footsteps, the rattle of wheels, 
and the mingled hum of a multitude of voices, with strains 
of music and loud laughter breaking through. Emerging 
into a great, gloomy hall, a curtain was drawn aside; she 
found herself gently propelled into an open balcony, whence 
she looked out upon the festal street, with gay tapestries 
flaunting over all the palace fronts, the windows thronged 
with merry faces, and a crowd of maskers rioting upon the 
pavement below. 

Immediately, she seemed to become a portion of the scene. 
Her pale, large-eyed, fragile beauty, her wondering aspect 
and bewildered grace, attracted the gaze of many ; and 
there fell around her a shower of bouquets, and bonbons — 
freshest blossoms and sweetest sugar-plums, sweets to the 
sweet — such as the revellers of the Carnival reserve as tri- 
butes to especial loveliness. Hilda pressed her hand across 
her brow; she let her eyelids fall, and, lifting them again, 
looked through the grotesque and gorgeous show, the chaos 
of mad jollity, in quest of some object by which she might 
assure herself that the whole speetacle was not an illusion. 

Beneath the balcony, she recognized a familiar and 
fondly remembered face. The spirit of the hour and the 
scene exercised its influence over her quick and sensitive na- 
ture; she caught up one of the rose-buds that had been 
showered upon her, and aimed it at the sculptor. It hit 
the mark; he turned his sad eyes upward, and there was 
Hilda, in whose gentle presence his own secret sorrow and 

459 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 

the obtrusive uproar of the Carnival alike died away from 
his perception. 

That night, the lamp beneath the Virgin’s shrine burned | 
as brightly as if it had never been extinguished ; and though [ 
the one faithful dove had gone to her melancholy perch, 
she greeted Hilda rapturously the next morning, and sum- 
moned her less constant companions, whithersoever they 
had flown, to renew their homage. 


460 


CHAPTER L 


Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon, Donatello 

The gentle reader, we trust, would not thank us for one of 
those minute elucidations, which are so tedious, and, after 
all, so imsatis factory, in clearing up the romantic mysteries 
of a story. He is too wise to insist upon looking closely at 
the wrong side of the tapestry, after the right one has been 
sufficiently displayed to him, woven with the best of the ar- 
tist’s skill, and cunningly arranged with a view to the har- 
monious exhibition of its colors. If any brilliant, or beau- 
tiful, or even tolerable effect have been produced, this pat- 
tern of kindly readers will accept it at its worth, without 
tearing its web apart, with the idle purpose of discovering 
how the threads have been knit together; for the sagacity 
by which he is distinguished will long ago have taught him 
that any narrative of human action and adventure — ^whether 
we call it history or romance — is certain to be a fragile 
handiwork, more easily rent than mended. The actual ex- 
perience of even the most ordinary life is full of events that 
never explain themselves, either as regards their origin or 
their tendency. 

It would be easy, from conversations which we have held 
with the sculptor, to suggest a clew to the mystery of 
Hilda’s disappearance; although, as long as she remained 
in Italy, there was a remarkable reserve in her communica- 
tions upon this subject, even to her most intimate friends. 
Either a pledge of secrecy had been exacted, or a prudential 
motive warned her not to reveal the stratagems of a religious 

461 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


body, or the secret acts of a despotic government — which- 
ever might be responsible in the present instance — while 
still within the scope of their jurisdiction. Possibly, she 
might not herself be fully aware what power had laid its 
grasp upon her person. What has chiefly perplexed us, 
however, among Hilda’s adventures, is the mode of her re- 
lease, in which some inscrutable tyranny or other seemed 
to take part in the frolic of the Carnival. We can only ac- j 
count for it, by supposing that the fitful and fantastic im- | 
agination of a woman — sportive, because she must otherwise 
be desperate — had arranged this incident, and made it the 
condition of a step which her conscience, or the conscience 
of another, required her to take. 

A few days after Hilda’s reappearance, she and the 
sculptor were straying together through the streets of Rome. 
Being deep in talk, it so happened that they found them- 
selves near the majestic, pillared portico, and huge, black 
rotundity of the Pantheon. It stands almost at the central 
point of the labyrinthine intricacies of the modern city, and 
often presents itself before the bewildered stranger, when 
he is in search of other objects. Hilda, looking up, pro- 
posed that they should enter. 

“I never pass it without going in,” she said, “to pay my 
homage at the tomb of Raphael.” 

“Nor I,” said Kenyon, “without stopping to admire the 
noblest edifice which the barbarism of the early ages, and 
the more barbarous pontiffs and princes of later ones, have 
spared to us.” 

They went in, accordingly, and stood in the free space of 
that great circle around which are ranged the arched re- 
cesses and stately altars, formerly dedicated to heathen 
gods, but Christianized through twelve centuries gone by. 
The world has nothing else like the Pantheon. So grand 
it is, that the pasteboard statues over the lofty cornice do 

462 


MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO 

not disturb the effect, any more than the tin crowns and 
hearts, the dusty artificial flowers, and all manner of trump- 
ery gewgaws, hanging at the saintly shrines. The rust and 
dinginess that have dimmed the precious marble on the 
walls; the pavement, with its great squares and rounds 
of porphyry and granite, cracked crosswise and in a hun- 
dred directions, showing how roughly the troublesome ages 
have trampled here; the gray dome above, with its opening 
to the sky, as if heaven were looking down into the interior 
of this place of worship, left unimpeded for prayers to as- 
cend the more freely: all these things make an impression 
of solemnity, which St. Peter’s itself fails to produce. 

“I think,” said the sculptor, “it is to the aperture in the 
dome — that great Eye, gazing heavenward — that the Pan- 
theon owes the peculiarity of its effect. It is so heathenish, 
as it were, — so unlike all the snugness of our modern civil- 
ization! Look, too, at the pavement, directly beneath the 
open space! So much rain has fallen there, in the last two 
thousand years, that it is green with small, fine moss, such 
as grows over tombstones in a damp English churchyard.” 

“I like better,” replied Hilda, “to look at the bright, blue 
sky, roofing the edifice where the builders left it open. It 
is very delightful, in a breezy day, to see the masses of 
white cloud float over the opening, and then the sunshine 
fall through it again, fitfully, as it does now. Would 
it be any wonder if we were to see angels hovering there, 
partly in and partly out, with genial, heavenly faces, not in- 
tercepting the light, but only transmuting it into beautiful 
colors? Look at that broad, golden beam — a sloping cata- 
ract of sunlight — which comes down from the aperture and 
rests upon the shrine, at the right hand of the entrance !” 

“There is a dusky picture over that altar,” observed the 
sculptor. “Let us go and see if this strong illumination 
brings out any merit in it.” 


46S 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


Approaching the shrine, they found the picture little | 
worth looking at, but could not forbear smiling, to see that j 
a very plump and comfortable tabby-cat — whom we our- | 
selves have often observed haunting the Pantheon — ^had es- \ 
tablished herself on the altar, in the genial sunbeam, and i 
was fast asleep among the holy tapers. Their footsteps dis- | 
turbing her, she awoke, raised herself, and sat blinking in | 
the sun, yet with a certain dignity and self-possession, as | 
if conscious of representing a saint. 

“I presume,” remarked Kenyon, “that this is the first of 
the feline race that has ever set herself up as an object of 
worship, in the Pantheon or elsewhere, since the days of 
ancient Egypt. See; there is a peasant from the neighbor- 
ing market, actually kneeling to her ! She seems a gracious 
and benignant saint enough.” 

“Do not make me laugh,” said Hilda, reproachfully, “but 
help me to drive the creature away. It distresses me to see 
that poor man, or any human being, directing his prayers 
so much amiss.” 

“Then, Hilda,” answered the sculptor, more seriously, 
“the only place in the Pantheon for you and me to kneel is 
on the pavement beneath the central aperture. If we pray 
at a saint’s shrine, we shall give utterance to earthly wishes ; 
but if we pray face to face with the Deity, we shall feel it 
impious to petition for aught that is narrow and selfish. 
Methinks, it is this that makes the Catholics so delight in 
the worship of saints; they can bring up all their little 
worldly wants and whims, their individualities and human 
weaknesses, not as things to be repented of, but to be hu- 
mored by the canonized humanity to which they pray. In- 
deed, it is very tempting!” 

What Hilda might have answered must be left to con- 
jecture; for as she turned from the shrine, her eyes were 
attracted to the figure of a female penitent, kneeling on 

464 


MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO 

the pavement just beneath the great central eye, in the very 
spot which Kenyon had designated as the only one whence 
prayers should ascend. The upturned face was invisible, 
behind a veil or mask, which formed a part of the garb. 

*Tt cannot be!” whispered Hilda, with emotion. “No; 
it cannot be!” 

“What disturbs you.^” asked Kenyon. “Why do you 
tremble so.^” 

“If it were possible,” she replied, “I should fancy that 
kneeling figure to be Miriam!” 

“As you say, it is impossible,” rejoined the sculptor. “We 
know too well what has befallen both her and Donatello.” 

“Yes; it is impossible!” repeated Hilda. 

Her voice was still tremulous, however, and she seemed 
imable to withdraw her attention from the kneeling figure. 
Suddenly, and as if the idea of Miriam had opened the 
whole volume of Hilda’s reminiscences, she put this question 
to the sculptor: — 

“Was Donatello really a Faun.^” 

“If you had ever studied the pedigree of the far-de- 
scended heir of Monte Beni, as I did,” answered Kenyon, 
with an irrepressible smile, “you would have retained few 
doubts on that point. Faun or not, he had a genial nature, 
which, had the rest of mankind been in accordance with it, 
would have made earth a paradise to our poor friend. It 
seems the moral of his story, that human beings of Dona- 
tello’s character, compounded especially for happiness, have 
no longer any business on earth, or elsewhere. Life has 
grown so sadly serious, that such men must change their 
nature, or else perish, like the antediluvian creatures, that 
required, as the condition of their existence, a more summer- 
like atmosphere than ours.” 

“I will not accept your moral!” replied the hopeful and 
happy-natured Hilda. 


465 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


“Then here is another; take your choice!” said the sculp- j 
tor, remembering what Miriam had recently suggested, in ! 
reference to the same point. “He perpetrated a great 1 
crime ; and his remorse, gnawing into his soul, has awakened i 
it; developing a thousand high capabilities, moral and in- i 
tellectual, which we never should have dreamed of asking 
for, within the scanty compass of the Donatello whom we 
knew.” 

“I know not whether this is so,” said Hilda. “But what 
then ?” 

“Here comes my perplexity,” continued Kenyon. “Sin 
has educated Donatello, and elevated him. Is sin, then, — 
which we deem such a dreadful blackness in the universe, — • 
is it, like sorrow, merely an element of human education, 
through which we struggle to a higher and purer state than 
we could otherwise have attained? Did Adam fall, that 
we might ultimately rise to a far loftier paradise than 
his?” 

“Oh, hush!” cried Hilda, shrinking from him with an 
expression of horror which wounded the poor, speculative 
sculptor to the soul. “This is terrible; and I could weep for 
you, if you indeed believe it. Do not you perceive what a 
mockery your creed makes, not only of all religious senti- 
ments, but of moral law ? and how it annuls and obliterates 
whatever precepts of Heaven are written deepest within us ? 
You have shocked me beyond words !” 

“Forgive me, Hilda!” exclaimed the sculptor, startled by 
her agitation; “I never did believe it! But the mind wan- 
ders wild and wide ; and, so lonely as I live and work, I have 
neither pole-star above nor light of cottage-windows here j 
below, to bring me home. Were you my guide, my coun- | 
seller, my inmost friend, with that white wisdom which I 
clothes you as a celestial garment, all would go well. O | 
Hilda, guide me home!” 


466 


MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO 

“We are both lonely; both far from home!” said Hilda, 
her eyes filling with tears. “I am a poor, weak girl, and 
have no such wisdom as you fancy in me.” 

What further may have passed between these lovers, 
while standing before the pillared shrine and the marble 
Madonna that marks Raphael’s tomb, whither they had now 
wandered, we are unable to record. But when the kneeling 
figure beneath the open eye of the Pantheon arose, she 
looked towards the pair, and extended her hands with a 
gesture of benediction. Then they knew that it was Miriam. 
They suffered her to glide out of the portal, however, with- 
out a greeting; for tliose extended hands, even while they 
blessed, seemed to repel, as if Miriam stood on the other 
side of a fathomless abyss, and warned them from its verge. 

So Kenyon won the gentle Hilda’s shy affection, and her 
consent to be his bride. Another hand must henceforth trim 
the lamp before the Virgin’s shrine; for Hilda was coming 
down from her old tower, to be herself enshrined and wor- 
shipped as a household saint, in the light of her husband’s 
fireside. And, now that life had so much human promise in 
it, they resolved to go back to their own land; because the 
years, after all, have a kind of emptiness, when we spend 
too many of them on a foreign shore. We defer the reality 
of life, in such cases, until a future moment, when we shall 
again breathe our native air; but, by and by, there are no 
future moments; or, if we do return, we find that the native 
air has lost its invigorating quality, and that life has shifted 
its reality to the spot where we have deemed ourselves only 
temporary residents. Thus, between two countries, we have 
none at all, or only that little space of either, in which we 
finally lay down our discontented bones. It is wise, there- 
fore, to come back betimes, or never. 

Before they quitted Rome, a bridal gift was laid on 
Hilda’s table. It was a bracelet, evidently of great cost, 

467 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


being composed of seven ancient Etruscan gems^ dug out of 
seven sepulchres, and each one of them the signet of some 
princely personage, who had lived an immemorial time [] 
ago. Hilda remembered this precious ornament. It had 
been Miriam’s; and once, with the exuberance of fancy J 
that distinguished her, she had amused herself with tell- | 
ing a mythical and magic legend for each gem, compris- j 
ing the imaginary adventures and catastrophe of its former ; 
wearer. Thus, the Etruscan bracelet became the con- 
necting bond of a series of seven wondrous tales, all of 
which, as they were dug out of seven sepulchres, were char- 
acterized by a seven-fold sepulchral gloom; such as Miriam’s 
imagination, shadowed by her own misfortunes, was wont 
to fling over its most sportive flights. 

And now, happy as Hilda was, the bracelet brought the 
tears into her eyes, as being, in its entire circle, the symbol 
of as sad a mystery as any that Miriam had attached to the | 
separate gems. For, what was Miriam’s life to be? And I 
where was Donatello? But Hilda had a hopeful soul, and 
saw sunlight on the mountain-tops. 

CONCLUSION 

There comes to the author, from many readers of the 
foregoing pages, a demand for further elucidations respect- 
ing the mysteries of the story. 

He reluctantly avails himself of the opportunity af- 
forded by a new edition, to explain such incidents and pas- 
sages as may have been left too much in the dark; reluc- 
tantly, he repeats, because the necessity makes him sensible 
that he can have succeeded but imperfectly, at best, in 
throwing about this Romance the kind of atmosphere es- 
sential to the effect at which he aimed. 

He designed the story and the characters to bear, of 
course, a certain relation to human nature and human life, 

468 


CONCLUSION 


but still to be so artfully and airily removed from our mun- 
dane sphere, that some laws and proprieties of their own 
should be implicitly and insensibly acknowledged. 

The idea of the modern Faun, for example, loses all the 
poetry and beauty which the Author fancied in it, and be- 
comes nothing better than a grotesque absurdity, if we 
bring it into the actual light of day. He had hoped to 
mystify this anomalous creature between the Real and the 
Fantastic, in such a manner that the reader’s sympathies 
might be excited to a certain pleasurable degree, without 
impelling him to ask how Cuvier would have classified poor 
Donatello, or to insist upon being told, in so many words, 
whether he had furry ears or no. As respects all who ask 
such questions, the book is, to that extent, a failure. 

Nevertheless, the Author fortunately has it in his power 
to throw light upon several matters in which some of his 
readers appear to feel an interest. To confess the truth, 
he was himself troubled with a curiosity similar to that 
which he has just deprecated on the part of his readers, and 
once took occasion to cross-examine his friends, Hilda and 
the sculptor, and to pry into several dark recesses of the 
story, with which they had heretofore imperfectly ac- 
quainted him. 

We three had climbed to the top of St. Peter’s, and were 
looking down upon the Rome we were soon to leave, but 
which (having already sinned sufficiently in that way) it 
is not my purpose further to describe. It occurred to me, 
that, being so remote in the upper air, my friends might 
safely utter, here, the secrets which it would be perilous 
even to whisper on lower earth. 

“Hilda,” I began, “can you tell me the contents of that 
mysterious packet which Miriam intrusted to your charge, 
and which was addressed to Signore Luca Barboni, at the 
Palazzo Cenci.^” 


469 


ROMANCE OF MONTEBENI 

“I never had any further knowledge of it,” replied 
Hilda, “nor felt it right to let myself be curious upon the 
subject.” [! 

“As to its precise contents,” interposed Kenyon, “it is ji 
impossible to speak. But Miriam, isolated as she seemed, 
had family connections in Rome, one of whom, there is [ 
reason to believe, occupied a position in the papal govern- 
ment. 

“This Signore Luca Barboni was either the assumed name 
of the personage in question, or the medium of communica- 
tion between that individual and Miriam. Now, under such 
a government as that of Rome, it is obvious that Miriam’s i 
privacy and isolated life could only be maintained through 
the connivance and support of some influential person con- 
nected with the administration of affairs. Free and self- 
controlled as she appeared, her every movement was 
watched and investigated far more thoroughly by the 
priestly rulers than by her dearest friends. 

“Miriam, if I mistake not, had a purpose to withdraw 
herself from this irksome scrutiny and to seek real ob- 
scurity in another land; and the packet, to be delivered 
long after her departure, contained a reference to this de- 
sign, besides certain family documents, which were to be 
imparted to her relative as from one dead and gone.” 

“Yes, it is clear as a London fog,” I remarked. “On 
this head no further elucidation can be desired. But when 
Hilda went quietly to deliver the packet, why did she so 
mysteriously vanish?” 

“You must recollect,” replied Kenyon, with a glance of 
friendly commiseration at my obtuseness, “that Miriam had 
utterly disappeared, leaving no trace by which her where- 
abouts could be known. In the meantime, the municipal 
authorities had become aware of the murder of the Capu- 
chin; and from many preceding circumstances, such as 

470 


CONCLUSION 


his persecution of Miriam, they must have seen an obvious 
connection between herself and that tragical event. Fur- 
thermore, there is reason to believe that Miriam was sus- 
pected of connection with some plot, or political intrigue, of 
which there may have been tokens in the packet. And when 
Hilda appeared, as the bearer of this missive, it was really 
quite a matter of course, under a despotic government, that 
she should be detained.” 

“Ah, quite a matter of course, as you say,” answered I. 
“How excessively stupid in me not to have seen it sooner! 
But there are other riddles. On the night of the extinction 
of the lamp, you met Donatello, in a penitent’s garb, and 
afterwards saw and spoke to Miriam, in a coach, with a gem 
glowing on her bosom. What was the business of these two 
guilty ones in Rome, and who was Miriam’s companion ?” 

“Who I” repeated Kenyon, “why her official relative, to be 
sure; and, as to their business, Donatello’s still gnawing re- 
morse had brought him hitherward, in spite of Miriam’s 
entreaties, and kept him lingering in the neighborhood of 
Rome, with the ultimate purpose of delivering himself up 
to justice. Hilda’s disappearance, which took place the day 
before, was known to them through a secret channel, and 
had brought them into the city, where Miriam, as I surmise, 
began to make arrangements, even then, for that sad frolic 
of the Carnival.” 

“And where was Hilda all that dreary time between?” 
inquired I. 

“Where were you, Hilda?” asked Kenyon, smiling. 

Hilda threw her eyes on all sides, and seeing that there 
was not even a bird of the air to fly away with the secret, 
nor any human being nearer than the loiterers by the obe- 
lisk, in the piazza below, she told us about her mysterious 
abode. 

“I was a prisoner in the Convent of the Sacre Coeur, in 

471 


ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI 


the Trinita de’ Monte/* said she_, “but in such kindly 
custody of pious maidens, and watched over by such a dear 
old priest, that — had it not been for one or two disturbing 
recollections, and also because I am a daughter of the 
Puritans — I could willingly have dwelt there forever. j 

“My entanglement with Miriam’s misfortunes, and the j 
good abbate’s mistaken hope of a proselyte, seem to me a j 
sufficient clew to the whole mystery.” S 

“The atmosphere is getting delightfully lucid,” observed 
I, “but there are one or two things that still puzzle me. 
Could you tell me — and it shall be kept a profound secret, 

I assure you — what were Miriam’s real name and rank, and 
precisely the nature of the troubles that led to all those dire- 
ful consequences.^” 

“Is it possible that you need an answer to those ques- 
tions.^” exclaimed Kenyon, with an aspect of vast surprise. 
“Have you not even surmised Miriam’s name? Think 
awhile, and you will assuredly remember it. If not, I con- 
gratulate you most sincerely; for it indicates that your feel- 
ings have never been harrowed by one of the most dreadful 
and mysterious events that have occurred within the present 
century !” 

“Well,” resumed I, after an interval of deep considera- 
tion, “I have but few things more to ask. Where, at this 
moment, is Donatello?” 

“The castle of Saint Angelo,” said Kenyon, sadly, turn- 
ing his face towards that sepulchral fortress, “is no longer 
a prison ; but there are others which have dungeons as deep, 
and in one of them, I fear, lies our poor Faun.” 

“And why, then, is Miriam at large?” I asked. 

“Call it cruelty if you like, not mercy,” answered Ken- 
yon. “But, after all, her crime lay merely in a glance. She 
did no murder!” 

“Only one question more,” said I, with intense earnest- 

472 


CONCLUSION 


ness. “Did Donatello’s ears resemble those of the Faun 
of Praxiteles?” 

“I know, but may not tell,” replied Kenyon, smiling 
mysteriously. “On that point, at all events, there shall be 
not one word of explanation.” 

Leamington, March 14, I860. 


47S 


PREFACE 




It is now seven or eight years (so many_, at all events, 
that I cannot precisely remember the epoch) since the au- 
thor of this romance last appeared before the Public. It 
had grown to be a custom with him to introduce each of his 
humble publications with a familiar kind of preface, ad- 
dressed nominally to the Public at large, but really to a 
character with whom he felt entitled to use far greater 
freedom. He meant it for that one congenial friend, — 
more comprehensive of his purposes, more appreciative of 
his success, more indulgent of his shortcomings, and, in all 
respects, closer and kinder than a brother, — ^that all-sympa- 
thizing critic, in short, whom an author never actually 
meets, but to whom he implicitly makes his appeal when- 
ever he is conscious of having done his best. 

The antique fashion of Prefaces recognized this genial 
personage as the “Kind Reader,” the “Gentle Reader,” 
the “Beloved,” the “Indulgent,” or, at coldest, the “Hon- 
ored Reader,” to whom the prim old author was wont to 
make his preliminary explanations and apologies, with the 
certainty that they would be favorably received. I never 
personally encountered, nor corresponded through the post 
with this representative essence of all delightful and desir- 
able qualities which a reader can possess. But, fortunately 
for myself, I never therefore concluded him to be merely 
a mythic character. I had always a sturdy faith in his 
actual existence, and wrote for him year after year, during 

474 


PREFACE 


which the great eye of the Public (as well it might) almost 
utterly overlooked my small productions. 

Unquestionably, this gentle, kind, benevolent, indulgent, 
and most beloved and honored Reader did once exist for 
me, and (in spite of the infinite chances against a letter’s 
reaching its destination without a definite address) duly re- 
ceived the scrolls which I flung upon whatever wind was 
blowing, in the faith that they would find him out. But, 
is he extant now? In these many years, since he last heard 
from me, may he not have deemed his earthly task accom- 
plished, and have withdrawn to the paradise of gentle 
readers, wherever it may be, to the enjoyments of which 
his kindly charity on my behalf must surely have entitled 
him? I have a sad foreboding that this may be the truth. 
The “Gentle Reader,” in the case of any individual author, 
is apt to be extremely short-lived; he seldom outlasts a 
literary fashion, and, except in very rare instances, closes 
his weary eyes before the writer has half done with him. 
If I find him at all, it will probably be under some mossy 
gravestone, inscribed with a half-obliterated name which 
I shall never recognize. 

Therefore, I have little heart or confidence (especially’', 
writing as I do, in a foreign land, and after a long, long 
absence from my own) to presume upon the existence of 
that friend of friends, that unseen brother of the soul, 
whose apprehensive sympathy has so often encouraged me 
to be egotistical in my prefaces, careless though unkindly 
eyes should skim over what was never meant for them. I 
stand upon ceremony now; and, after stating a few particu- 
lars about the work which is here offered to the Public, 
must make my most reverential bow, and retire behind the 
curtain. 

This Romance was sketched out during a residence of 
considerable length in Italy, and has been rewritten and 

475 


PREFACE 


prepared for the press in England. The author proposed 
to himself merely to write a fanciful story^ evolving a 
thoughtful moral, and did not purpose attempting a por- 
traiture of Italian manners and character. He has lived 
too long abroad not to be aware that a foreigner seldom . 
acquires that knowledge of a country at once flexible and j 
profound, which may justify him in endeavoring to idealize I 
its traits. 

Italy, as the site of his Romance, was chiefly valuable to 
him as affording a sort of poetic or fairy precinct, where 
actualities would not be so terribly insisted upon as they 
are, and must needs be, in America. No author, without 
a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance 
about a country where there is no' shadow, no antiquity, no 
mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything 
but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple day- 
light, as is happily the case with my dear native land. It 
will be very long, I trust, before romance-writers may find 
congenial and easily handled themes, either in the annals 
of our stalwart republic, or in any characteristic and prob- 
able events of our individual lives. Romance and poetry, 
ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers, need ruin to make them glow. 

In rewriting these volumes, the author was somewhat 
surprised to see the extent to which he had introduced de- 
scriptions of various Italian objects, antique, pictorial, and 
statuesque. Yet these things fill the mind everywhere in 
Italy, and especially in Rome, and cannot easily be kept 
from flowing out upon the page when one writes freely, 
and with self-enjoyment. And, again, while reproducing 
the book, on the broad and dreary sands of Redcar, with 
the gray German Ocean tumbling in upon me, and the 
northern blast always howling in my ears, the complete 
change of scene made these Italian reminiscences shine out 
so vividly that I could not find it in my heart to cancel them. 

476 


PREFACE 


An act of justice remains to be performed towards two 
men of genius with whose productions the author has al- 
lowed himself to use a quite unwarrantable freedom. Hav- 
ing imagined a sculptor in this Romance, it was necessary to 
provide him with such works in marble as should be in 
keeping with the artistic ability which he was supposed to 
possess. With this view, the author laid felonious hands 
upon a certain bust of Milton, and a statue of a pearl-diver, 
which he found in the studio of Mr. Paul Akers, and se- 
cretly conveyed them to the premises of his imaginary 
friend, in the Via Frezza. Not content even with these 
spoils, he committed a further robbery upon a magnificent 
statue of Cleopatra, the production of Mr. William W. 
Story, an artist whom his country and the world will not 
long fail to appreciate. He had thoughts of appropriating, 
likewise, a certain door of bronze by Mr. Randolph 
Rogers, representing the history of Columbus in a series 
of admirable bas-reliefs, but was deterred by an unwilling- 
ness to meddle with public property. Were he capable of 
stealing from a lady, he would certainly have made free 
with Miss Hosmer^s admirable statue of Zenobia. 

He now wishes to restore the above-mentioned beautiful 
pieces of sculpture to their proper owners, with many 
thanks, and the avowal of his sincere admiration. What 
he has said of them in the Romance does not partake of 
the fiction in which they are imbedded, but expresses his 
genuine opinion, which, he has little doubt, will be found 
in accordance with that of the Public. It is, perhaps, un- 
necessary to say, that, while stealing their designs, the 
Author has not taken a similar liberty with the personal 
characters of either of these gifted sculptors; his own man 
of marble being entirely imaginary. 

Leamington, December 15, 1859* 

477 


INTRODUCTORY NOTE 


The last of Hawthorne’s completed romances was also 
thought by its author to be his best. “The Marble Faun” 
certainly was the outcome of copious observation and ma- 
ture deliberation; and it was produced after he had rested 
from composition for the space of five years. He began 
the book in the winter of 1859^ at Rome, while harassed by 
illness in his family, and to some extent distracted by the 
number of interests appealing to him on all sides — “inter- 
ruptions,” as he expressed it, “from things to see and 
things to suffer.” | 

He wrote to Mr. Fields at this time: “I take great credit | 
to myself for having sternly shut myself up for an hour or l 
two almost every day, and come to close grips with a ro- 
mance which I have been trying to tear out of my mind. 
As for my success, I can’t say much. ... I only know that 
I have produced what seems to be a larger amount of 
scribble than either of my former romances, and that por- 
tions of it interested me a good deal while I was writing 
them.” 

He had already begun to sketch the romance during 
the previous summer while at Florence, where he wrote, 
in his journal, with reference to this new scheme: “It 
leaves me little heart for journalizing and describing new 
things; and six months of uninterrupted monotony would 
be more valuable to me just now, than the most brilliant 
succession of novelties.” Soon after this he removed from 

478 


INTRODUCTORY NOTE 


his quarters in the city to the villa of Montauto on the hill 
called Bellosguardo, about a mile from Florence. This is 
a lovely spot^ and the view from it over the valley of the 
Arno has since been described by a sympathetic traveller, 
himself a poet, as suggesting an outlook upon some “glade 
of heaven.” The villa itself, which remains standing, and 
is occasionally occupied by American tenants, is a capa- 
cious, old-fashioned building, with a tower, and served as 
the model for Donatello’s ancestral home, Monte Beni. At 
the time of Hawthorne’s residence there, it was invested 
with a sort of tradition not likely to lessen its desirability 
for him — that of being haunted. A murder was said to 
have been committed at some epoch conveniently remote, 
in a small oratory, in the tower; and from time to time 
semi-unaccountable sounds — the rustling of unseen robes, 
stealthy steps, and groans from the oratory, — ^were heard, 
which passed as evidence that the tragedy was reenacting 
by the murderer and the victim. Here Hawthorne con- 
tinued, no doubt, to dream over his new story, perhaps put- 
ting an occasional touch to it. On the journey thence to 
Siena, in October, he left the manuscript in a bag, under 
one of the seats in the railway carriage; but, as he notes 
down, on going to search for his luggage, “At last the 
whole of our ten trunks and tin bandbox were produced, 
and finally my leather bag, in which was my journal and a 
manuscript book containing my sketch of a romance. It 
gladdened my very heart to see it.” 

While in Rome, Hawthorne went on laboring and medi- 
tating upon “The Marble Faun,” the general theme and 
scope of which he occasionally descanted upon to his friend 
John Lothrop Motley, during the rambles which they took 
together; though the romancer never gave the historian 
any clew to the whole problem of his still unfinished work. 
Partly because of the interruptions already mentioned, and 

479 


INTRODUCTORY NOTE 


partly for other reasons, the book did not progress beyond i 
the stage of an elaborate sketch until Hawthorne quitted! 
the Continent. “I find this Italian air,^’ he had said in aj 
letter from Florence, “not favorable to the close toil of com*ji 
position, although it is a very good air to dream in. I mustl 
breathe the fogs of old England, or the east-winds of| 
Massachusetts, in order to put me into working trim.**! 
Finally, on getting to England, he systematically set about [i 
concluding his task, as Mrs. Hawthorne has explained. I 

“More than four months were now taken up in writing 
‘The Marble Faun,* in great part at the seaside town of 
Redcar, Yorkshire, Mr. Hawthorne having concluded to 
remain another year in England, chiefly to accomplish 
that romance. In Redcar, where he remained until Septem- 
ber or October, he wrote no journal, but only the book. 
He then went to Leamington, where he finished ‘The 
Marble Faun,’ in March [1860].*’^ 

“The long, hairy ears of Midas,” in the “Virtuoso’s 
Collection,” have already been spoken of as furnishing a 
slight intimation of Hawthorne’s interest in such a phe- 
nomenon,^ long before he went to Italy, But the first 
positive trace of the conception, which was to ripen into 
“The Marble Faun,” appears in the “French and Italian 
Note-Books,” under the date of April 22, 1858. Setting 
down a brief account of his visit to the Capitol, Hawthorne 
says : — 

“We afterwards went into the scuplture gallery, where I 
looked at the Faun of Praxiteles, and was sensible of a 
peculiar charm in it; a sylvan beauty and homeliness, 
friendly and wild at once. The lengthened but not pre- 
posterous ears, and the little tail which we infer, have an 

^French and Italian Note-Books ^ June 22, 1859. j 

2 See the prefatory note to Mosses from an Old Manse^ in the I 
Riverside edition. 


480 


INTRODUCTORY NOTE 


exquisite effect^ and make the spectator smile in his very 
heart. This race of fauns was the most delightful of all 
that antiquity imagined. It seems to me that a story, with 
all sorts of fun and pathos in it, might be contrived on 
the idea of their species having become intermingled with 
5 the human race . . . the pretty hairy ears should occasion- 
I ally reappear in members of the family; and the moral in- 
I stincts and intellectual characteristics of the faun might be 
* most picturesquely brought out, without detriment to the 
t; human interest of the story. Fancy this combination in the 

( person of a young lady !” 

It is believed by a member of the author’s family that 
one of the Counts of Montauto, whose personal appearance 
and grace were known to have made an impression on 
Hawthorne, furnished him with suggestions which estab- 
lished a connection between the Faun of Praxiteles and the 
Montauto villa as it afterward appeared, under the guise 
of Monte Beni. This living figure may also perhaps have 
assisted him in giving reality to his conception of Donatello. 
The young Italian of the romance, whose resemblance to 
the statue is made an important point, receives appropri- 
ately the name of a famous Italian sculptor; a name of 
which the associations form a link between the marble and 
the man. The assertion has often been put forth in private, 
' and it may be in print also, that Hawthorne made studies 
for other personages in the story from people of his ac- 
quaintance, and even from members of his own family or 
■; household. It is perhaps advisable to state here that there 
is no authority whatever for such an assertion, excepting 
. the unaided fancy of those who, having known something 
j of his connections, chose to trace purely imaginary resem- 
blances. With the problem of Donatello’s development into 
a being with a conscience was interwoven the mystery of 
Miriam’s situation, concerning which no more need be 


i 


INTRODUCTORY NOTE 


said in this place than that it was evidently inspired by the 
author’s reflections upon the story of Beatrice Cenci.^ Of 
the original of Hilda’s tower in the Via Portoghese^ at 
Rome, a description is given in the “Note-Books” (May 15, 
1858), together with the legend accounting for the per- 
petual light at the Virgin’s shrine on the tower. (Among 
Italians, this story has imparted to the building the name 
of Torre del Simio.) 

Several names were proposed for the romance, and 
among them “The Transformation of the Faun.” This 
the English publishers shortened to “Transformation,” 
while in America the work was brought out with the better 
known title, preferred by Hawthorne himself, “The Marble 
Faun: a Romance of Monte Beni.” Among the many 
tokens of success which its publication brought to Haw- 
thorne was a letter from Motley, with an extract from 
which this note may close: — 

“Everything that you have ever written, I believe, I 
have read many times. . . . But the ‘Romance of Monte 
Beni,’ has the additional charm for me that it is the first 
book of yours that I have read since I had the pleasure of 
making your personal acquaintance. My memory goes 
back at once to those walks (alas, not too frequent) we 
used to take along the Tiber, or in the Campagna; . . , 
and it is delightful to get hold of the book now, and know 
that it is impossible for you any longer, after waving your ! 
wand as you occasionally did then indicating where the 
treasure was hidden, to sink it again beyond the plummet’s 
sound. . . . With regard to the story, which has been 
somewhat criticised, I can only say that to me it is quite 
satisfactory. I like those shadowy, weird, fantastic, 
Hawthornesque shapes flitting through the golden gloom 

1 Should the reader care to see a discussion of this matter, the j 
ninth chapter of A Study of Hawthorne may be consulted. 

482 


INTRODUCTORY NOTE 


which is the atmosphere of the book. I like the misty way 
in which the story is indicated rather than revealed; the 
outlines are quite definite enough from the beginning to 
the end, to those who have imagination enough to follow 
you in your airy flights; and to those who complain, I sup- 
pose that nothing less than an illustrated edition, with a 
large gallows on the last page, with Donatello in the most 
pensile of attitudes — ^his ears revealed through a white 
night-cap — ^would be satisfactory.” 

In replying to this, Hawthorne wrote: “You work out 
my imperfect efi’orts and half make the book with your 
warm imagination; and see what I myself saw, but could 
only hint at. Well, the romance is a success, even if it never 
finds another reader.” G. P. L. 


EDITORIAL NOTE • 

In The Unit Books the edition from which we reprint is 
followed in respect to punctuation. In the supplementary 
editorial matter more modern rules of punctuation will 
govern. This will account for any want of consistency in 
the volume as a whole. 


483 


THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR 


Nathaniel Hawthorne was born 4 July 1804 in Salem, 
Massachusetts, in a house numbered 21 Union street, still 
standing although materially changed from its original 
appearance. His father was Nathaniel Hathorne, his 
mother Elizabeth Clarke Manning, whose family of good 
English stock settled early in Salem and Ipswich. He was 
the second of three children, having two sisters — Elizabeth 
Manning, who survived him, and Maria Louisa. 

At the time of his earliest publications the author changed 
his name to Hawthorne, an alteration adopted also by his 
sisters; it is believed that this was merely a return to the 
original spelling used by his forefathers. 

His first American ancestor was William Hathorne, who 
emigrated to Massachusetts with John Winthrop in 1630 
and settled in Salem. It is not known from what part of 
England he came, but in American Note-books Haw- 
thorne says that he was the younger brother of a family 
having its seat in a place called Wigcastle, in Wiltshire. 
Hathorne street, in Salem, perpetuates his memory. For 
the most part the rest of his ancestry were seafaring men 
and of little renown. His father, a sea-captain, died at 
Surinam in 1808 aged 33. His mother lived long enough 
to see her son famous as the author of Twice-told Tales, 
hut died before he had written his best-known works. She 
was a woman of culture and refinement and is believed 
to have exerted considerable influence over his intellectual 

484 


THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR 


development. An accident which befell him when he was 
nine prevented him from taking part in active pursuits for 
three years and it may be due to this that he so early 
matured. Dr. Worcester^ the maker of the dictionary 
which bears his name^ had a school at Salem and the young 
Hawthorne was among his pupils. 

In 1820 he commenced to prepare for college under 
Benjamin L. Oliver^ lawyer. It was at this time that he 
put forth his first literary efforts^ writing three numbers 
of a weekly paper called The Spectator. Inheriting a 
taste for travel and adventure, he announced his intention 
of going to sea, but his mother’s wishes prevailed, and 
after his youthful ambition in that direction he never 
showed inclination for any other profession than that of 
letters. 

In 1821 he took up his, residence at Bowdoin college. 
He described this place in Fanshawe under the name of 
Harley college. Few details of his life there survive. 
He seems to have impressed his school-fellows with his 
physical beauty, his shyness and a certain innate force. 
In the class with him were Henry W. Longfellow, George 
Barrell Cheever and John S. C. Abbott. Franklin Pierce, 
who was in the class above, was one of his few intimate 
friends. Hawthorne gained a reputation for his Latin 
translations and for English composition but did not take 
final honors. After his graduation he published Fan- 
shawe anonymously and wrote sketches and stories, col- 
lected under the title of Twice-told Tales. 

In 1836 he went to Boston to edit the American Maga- 
zine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge but remained 
there only four months; he also commenced to write for 
The Token, a paper in which his literary work first became 
known. 

His life at Salem was that of a recluse; he studied, 
485 


THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR 


worked and walked^ but this hermit-like existence was 
changed into that of a man of affairs by his acceptance of 
a post in the custom-house in Boston^ where he remained 
for two years. From Boston he went to the Brook farm 
community; following this experience was his marriage, 
which took place July 1842 to Sophia, a daughter of Dr. 
Peabody of Salem. 

The newly married couple went to live at an old 
parsonage in Concord, Massachusetts, a description of 
which is given in American Note-books and in the intro- 
duction to Mosses from an Old Manse. Here his first 
daughter was born. In the autumn of 1845 the family 
returned to Salem and in the following spring, after the 
birth of his son Julian, he accepted a second political office, 
that of surveyor of the port at Salem. The routine dis- 
turbed his creative moods and not until after he lost office 
did he finish his next work. The Scarlet Letter. At 
Lenox after a prolonged rest he wrote The House of 
the Seven Gables; it was there that his third child, a 
daughter, was born. In 1851 at West Newton he wrote The 
Blithedale Romance, commemorating his experiences with 
the community at Brook farm; before this he completed 
A Wonder Book for Boys and Girls. 

Early in 1852 he purchased a house in Concord, naming 
it The Wayside. His next work of importance was the 
Life of Franklin Pierce; and after Pierce was elected 
to the presidency Hawthorne accepted the office of consul 
at Liverpool, sailing with his family in March 1853. As 
before in his political life he had little time for writing, 
stray papers, articles, stories and revision comprising his 
literary output. In 1856 he resigned his office and after 
a trip through England took his family to Italy, where they 
remained a year and a half and where The Marble Faun 
was commenced, to be finished in England (1859). Before 

486 


THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR 

sailing for America he went to London^ staying with his 
friend Motley, meeting Lord DufFerin, the Hon. Mrs. 
Norton, Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall and other celebrated 
persons. 

His health commenced to fail while he was in Europe; 
domestic and financial troubles, as well as anxiety concern- 
ing the war, helped to reduce his strength. In the winter 
of 1861-62 he commenced Dr. Grimshaw’s Secret, the first 
idea of which was afterward merged in Septimius Felton, 
and some chapters of travel published under the title of 
Our Old Home. In April, 1862, he went to Washington 
and contributed a paper to the Atlantic Monthly entitled 
Chiefly about War Matters. After the publication of 
this there is little record of his life and work. On the 
first of December 1868 he sent the first instalment of 
The Dolliver Romance to the Atlantic Monthly. Two 
fragmentary scenes for this were published after his death. 
In the following spring he started on a carriage ride with 
his old friend General Pierce. From the Pemigewasset 
house at Plymouth the latter sent word on May 19 that 
Hawthorne was dead. 

He was buried in Sleepy Hollow cemetery at Concord 
on 24 May 1864. His grave is close to that of Thoreau 
and not far from the last resting-place of Ralph Waldo 
Emerson. 


487 


THE STORY OF THE BOOK 


The Marble Faun, written partly at Mentauto villa, near 
Florence, partly at Whitby and Leamington in England, 
was first published by Smith and Elder, London, March 
I860, in three volumes. The title was Transformation, 
though Hawthorne preferred The Marble Faun as Ticknor 
& Fields called the first American edition, in two volumes, 
published a few days later at Boston. 

This last of Hawthorne’s great romances has come to be 
perhaps the most read of any of his works, but at its pub- 
lication it was more severely criticized than The Scarlet 
Letter or The House of the Seven Gables. The reason for 
this lay partly in the dissatisfaction with the vague ending. 
In the second edition Hawthorne added a ‘‘conclusion” 
under the pretence of clearing the mystery. His friend 
Henry Bright, to whom was given the author’s manuscript, 
writes that Hawthorne said to him: “As regards the last 
chapter of Transformation in the second edition, don’t read 
it; it’s good for nothing. The story isn’t meant to be ex- 
plained; it’s cloudland.” 

Reviewing the first edition the Saturday Review found 
fault with the plot, or rather absence of plot after the 
promise of one, and declared that the characters were un- 
real but said in conclusion: “We may add that the style 
is singularly beautiful, the writing most careful and the 
justness and felicity of the epithets used to convey the 
effect of scenery unusually great . . . America may be 

488 


THE STORY OF THE BOOK 


proud of having produced a writer who in his own special 
walk of English has few rivals or equals in the mother 
country.” 

Henry Chorley, who claimed to have “discovered” Haw- 
thorne in England, reviewed Transformation for the 
Athenaeum. Donatello, he said, was a type hitherto unused 
in fiction but he added: “The other characters Mr. Haw- 
thorne must bear to be told are not new to a tale of his. 
Miriam the mysterious with her hideous tormentor was in- 
dicated in the Zenobia of the Blythedale Romance, — Hilda 
the pure and innocent is own cousin to Phoebe in The House 
of the Seven Gables, — Kenyon the sculptor, though care- 
fully wrought out, is a stone image with little that appeals 
to our experience of men.” Mrs. Hawthorne sent a reply 
to Mr. Chorley, who was a personal friend, and on the last 
page of her letter Hawthorne added: “Really I think you 
were wrong in assaulting the individuality of my poor 
Hilda. If her portrait bears any resemblance to that of 
Phoebe it must be the fault of my mannerism as a painter.” 

The Art Journal dismissed the book with a brief review, 
commending the descriptions of scenery. 

Hawthorne’s desire to write a tale for mystics and mor- 
alists rather than for lovers of romance was very generally 
misapprehended. Henry James, writing twenty years later 
(English Men of Letters series, 1880 ) gives as the reason: 
“The fault of Transformation is that the element of the 
unreal is pushed too far and that the book is neither posi- 
tively of one category nor of another.” But Mr. James 
says also: “Hawthorne has done few things more beautiful 
than the picture of the unequal complicity of guilt between 
the immature and dimly puzzled hero with his clinging, 
unquestioning, unexacting devotion and the dark, powerful, 
more vividly seeing feminine nature of Miriam . . . The 
character of Hilda has always struck me as an admirable 

489 


THE STORY OF THE BOOK 


invention — one of those things that mark the man of genius. 
It needed a man of genius and Hawthorne’s imaginative 
delicacy to feel the propriety of such a figure as Hilda’s 
and to perceive the relief it would both give and borrow.” 

George Parsons Lathrop (A Study of Hawthorne) in his 
criticism points out carefully the likeness between Miriam 
and Beatrice Cenci. “With the main theme is joined a very 
marvellous and intricate study of the psychology of Bea- 
trice Cenci’s story in a new form.” He contrasts Haw- 
thorne’s treatment of that “which is or is not what men call 
a crime” with Shelley’s. 

Among later critics Professor Woodberry says (American 
Men of Letters series^ 1902): “Hawthorne showed again 
his indifference to what became of his characters after they 
had fulfilled their function artistically; he had no human 
sympathy with their personal fortunes. This peculiarity is 
only another phase of the fact that crime itself did not 
interest him in its mortal career. The use he found in crime 
was only as the means by which sin was generated in the 
soul; and his concern was with the latter^ not the former.” 
Miriam is “the most vital character in the book, having 
touches in her of both Hester and Zenobia ; the three 
women are all of one kind in their different environment, 
and Miriam in the most human of the three, — strong, as- 
sertive, practical as they are, and also entirely resourceless 
in their tragedies . . . One loves Donatello, and of no 
other character of Hawthorne can it be said that it wins 
afi’ection . . . [The Marble Faun] is throughout a Puritan 
romance which has wandered abroad and clothed itself in 
strange masquerade in the Italian air. It is the best and 
fullest and most intimate expression of Hawthorne’s tem- 
perament, of the man he had come to be, and takes the 
imprint of his soul with minute delicacy and truth,” 


490 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


5 Dying Gladiator. An original work by an artist of 
Pergamos, first or second century B. C., representing a 
Gaul at the point of death. Formerly incorrectly called a 
gladiator. 

5 Antinous. A youth of great beauty, born in Bithy- 
nia, favorite of the emperor Hadrian, for whom he is said 
to have sacrificed his life. He was enrolled among the 
gods. The “eternal sadness” of the statue is considered 
less the result of the artist’s sentiment than of the effemi- 
nacy of the times when the subject was a favorite one 
among sculptors. 

5 Arch of Septimius Severus. Erected by the emperor 
in the year 203 A. D. to commemorate his victories over the 
Parthians. 

7 Faun of Praxiteles. The original of Praxiteles’s 
Faun is lost, but several copies attest the skill of this 
artist, the head of the later Grecian school (third century 
B. C.), which attempted such subjects as the Faun and 
the Hermes rather than the divine figures of Phidias and 
the earlier sculptors. Technically, of course, the Faun is 
misnamed. When Roman mythology sought to identify 
itself with that of Greece fauns were confounded with 
satyrs, but they were strictly creations of the Latin 
imagination. They took their name from Faunus, third 
king of the Laurentes and grandson of Saturnus. Fauns 
were beings more poetic, less sensual than satyrs; it is 

491 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


only in later writers that they take on the attributes of 
their coarser cousins from over the sea. It is, however, 
the more poetic and pleasant side of the Greek creatures 
of the wood that Praxiteles sought to portray. In regard 
to his choice of hero Hawthorne wrote to his friend 
Mr. Bright: “You will not find any photograph nor 
(so far as I am aware) any engraving of the Faun of 
Praxiteles. There are photographs, stereoscopic and other- 
wise, of another Faun, which is almost identical with the 
hero of my romance, though only an inferior repetition 
of it. My Faun is in the Capitol; the other in the Vatican. 
The genuine statue has never been photographed, on 
account, I suppose, of its standing in a bad light. The 
photographs of the Vatican Faun supply its place very 
well except as to the face, which is very inferior.” 

17 Transfiguration. Says Vasari in his Lives of 
Eminent Painters: “In this work the master has of a 
truth produced figures and heads of such extraordinary 
beauty, so new, so varied, and ‘at all points so admirable, 
that among the many works executed by his hand, this 
by the common consent of all artists is declared to be the 
most worthily renowned, the most excellent, the most 
divine. Whoever shall desire to see in what manner Christ 
transformed into the Godhead should be represented, let 
him come and behold it in this picture . . It is as if that 
sublime genius had gathered all the force of his powers 
into one effort, whereby the glory and the majesty of 
art should be made manifest in the countenance of Christ; 
having completed that, as one who had finished the great 
work which he had to accomplish, he touched the pencils 
no more, being shortly afterwards overtaken by death.” 
Modern criticism differs little from this tribute of a 
contemporary. 


492 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


24 Catacomb of St. Calixtus. Most important of the 
catacombs on the Via Appia. 

25 St. Cecilia. Roman virgin supposed to have suf- 
fered martyrdom under Marcus Aurelius. Regarded as 
patroness of music and inventor of the organ. 

32 Forestieri. Foreigners. 

32 Tieck and Hoffmann. The German romantic 
school, in which Tieck (1773-1853) and Hoffmann (1776- 
1822) developed the idea of the ghostly beyond their 
contemporaries, was not without a profound influence on 
the literatures of other countries. The “Gothic horror” 
that filled the work of Poe is felt in the writing of 
Hawthorne himself, subdued and humanized but distinct. 

38 Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini. 1598-1680. Famous 
in his day as painter, sculptor and architect, it is on his 
designs for the great colonnade of St. Peter’s and for other 
buildings that his fame now chiefly rests. During his life- 
time he was widely admired, but his fame has since his death 
declined. 

43 Jael and Sisera. Judges 4:17. 

44 Judith and Holof ernes. Holof ernes, a general of 
Nebuchadnezzar, laid siege to a city of the Jews, and the 
Israelites were in sore straits until Judith, a widow of the 
tribe of Simeon, went to the tent of Holof ernes, aroused 
his love with her beauty, and slew him in the night. She 
cut off his head and carried it to the besieged Jews, who 
at once attacked the leaderless Assyrians and defeated them. 
The book of Judith, in the Apocrypha, is now regarded as 
an historical romance. 

44 Daughter of Herodias. Mark 6:17. 

44 Bernardo Luini. 1465-1530. Most celebrated 
painter of the Lombard school founded by Da Vinci. Little 
is known of his life and it is only of recent years that his 
work has been separated from that of his master. Many 

493 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


frescoes at Milan^ where he lived^ show his rich coloring 
and delicate fancy. His work is full of charm and dignity. 

44) U'ffizi Gallery. Gallery of art in Florence_, founded 
by the Medici family and connected with the Pitti palace 
by a covered gallery over the Ponte Vecchio. 

48 Rachel and Jacob. Genesis, 29- 

50 Borghese. Roman family; in the reign of Paul V 
(Camillo Borghese, 1605-21) it became the wealthiest and 
most powerful family in Rome. 

51 The Virgin*s shrine. The tower in which Hilda 
lived still stands, with its burning lamp, at the end of a 
little by-street. It juts two stories above the building of 
which it forms a corner. The legend which Hawthorne 
could not “pause to tell” relates that the owner of the man- 
sion had a little son whom a pet monkey one day seized 
and carried up to the very top of the tower. The father, 
unable to attempt a rescue for fear of angering the monkey 
and causing it to drop the child, vowed that if the little one 
were returned safely to him he would keep a light burning 
forever in the tower, before a shrine to the Virgin. The 
monkey brought the child back uninjured and the father 
kept his vow. The tower is called the Monkey’s, and at 
night the little shrine and the faint lamp may still be seen 
from the street. 

Julian Hawthorne thinks that Hilda took her name from 
the abbey at Whitby, England, where the young painter 
was definitely christened. She is supposed to have been 
drawn from Miss Ada Shepard, an American friend in 
Rome. Julian Hawthorne, however, thinks her taken from 
Mrs. Hawthorne, with his mother’s “more winning and 
humane characteristics omitted.” 

52 Jacobis Ladder. Genesis, 28:10. 

53 Tower of Bahel. Genesis, 11. 

53 Column of Antoninus. In the Piazza Colonna, 
494 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


adorned with bas-reliefs of the victories of Marcus Aurelius. 
Erected by the Roman Senate A. D. 174. Now surmounted 
by a statue of St. Paul. 

57 Pinacotheca. Any picture gallery. 

57 Pamfili-Doria Palace, One of the great Roman 
palaces, erected 1650 by Olimpia Maidalchini, sister-in- 
law of Innocent X. 

57 Corsini Palace. Built by Riario family, from whom 
it was bought by Clement XII, in 1729^ for his nephew, 
Neri Corsini. 

57 Sciarra Palace. Built in l603; has a famous 
gallery of paintings. Situated on left of Corso. 

57 Guido Rent. 1575-1642. Trained in the school 
of Bologna, Guido came to Rome under Paul V, who em- 
ployed him much as former popes had used Raphael. His 
frescoes and decorative pieces are now held superior to his 
religious pictures. The Aurora in the Rospigliosi palace 
is his most admired work. 

57 Domenichino. 1518-1641. Born at Bologna; pupil 
of the Carracci with Guido and Albani. He became distin- 
guished as a fresco painter and was appointed painter and 
architect of the apostolic chamber. His masterpiece is Com- 
munion of St. Jerome in Vatican, where it has been ranked 
with Raphael’s Transfiguration. In fact a century after his 
death Domenichino was considered second only to Raphael, 
but modern criticism, while granting his genius as a colorist, 
holds him deficient in idealism and invention. 

57 Raphael (Raffaelli Sanzio d’Urbini). 1483-1520. 
The school of which Raphael is the head was developed 
from the Byzantine, in distinction to the classical school by 
which the Renaissance sought to revive the classic love of 
vigor and human power. Religious subjects, full of beauty 
and gently treated, occupied his time for the most part, 
though he departed a good deal from his school later in 

495 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


life. Under Julius II and Leo X he decorated many of the 
great buildings then being erected in Rome. 

64< Beatrice Cenci. Some critics have suggested that 
in the tragedy of Beatrice Hawthorne suggests the nature 
of the mystery surrounding Miriam. Whether he intended 
this is doubtful enough^ but the story of the “fair 
parricide” was of a nature to lay powerful hold on his 
imagination. Whether Beatrice killed her father with 
her own hands or not is not known; morally the guilt was 
probably hers, although she saw no guilt in what she 
held a righteous execution. The crimes of Cenci appalled 
even his loose age. His hatred of his children, and his 
treatment of them and their stepmother, was of a nature 
that even contemporary chroniclers hardly dare to speak. 
Exiled and imprisoned for his crimes he secured pardon 
through the veniality of the courts. In vain his family 
appealed to justice for protection. At length Beatrice, 
her stepmother and two of her brothers decided to take 
the law into their own hands. Cenci was murdered, some 
say by hired assassins, some say by Beatrice herself, who 
drove a nail through his temples after the manner of Jael 
when the courage of the servants failed them. His body 
was disposed of in such a manner that he seemed to have 
died by accident; but the arrest and torture of the two 
servants brought about the arrest also of Beatrice, her 
stepmother and brothers. The desire of the papal author- 
ities to possess themselves of the Cenci estates hastened 
their trial. Beatrice was subjected to torture, but she 
refused to confess. Her courage did not at any time fail 
her, and in September 1599 she went bravely to her death. 
The picture of Beatrice, which is very likely not by Guido, 
tradition says was made the day before her death. See 
Shelley’s Tragedy of the Cenci. 

496 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 

70 Porta del Popolo. The ancient Porta Flaminia^ 
one of the principal gates. 

70 Michael Angelo (Buonnarroti). 14)75-1564. The 
“wearer of the triple crown” was held in his day to be 
equally great as sculptor, painter and architect. Later 
judgment ranks him highest as sculptor and regrets some 
of his work as architect of St. Peter’s. The head of the 
classic school, his love of the human form is shown not only 
in his statues, his Moses, David and others, but in his great 
painting of the Last Judgment. Vasari called him “the 
disciple of Savonarola, the spiritual brother of Dante, the 
interpreter of the Hebrew prophets ; he lived among Titans 
and his creations were Promethean.” 

71 The GauVs last assault. The troops of Louis 
Napoleon took Rome after severe fighting, 30 April 1849, 
and re-established the papal power. The time of the 
Marble Faun is laid in the fifties. 

81 Contadinas. Peasants. 

81 Podere. Farm. 

84 Golden Age. Greek and Roman poets conceived a 
series of four ages. Golden, Silver, Brazen, and Iron. The 
Golden commemorated pristine innocence, peace and hap- 
piness. 

84 Pan. The god of flocks and shepherds among the 
Greeks. Inventor of the syrinx, or shepherd’s flute. 

87 Trastevere. Old part of Rome least altered from 
mediaeval times. 

107 Flaminian Gate. Entrance to Via Flaminia, named 
from Quintus Flaminus, general and consul, born 198 
B. C., celebrated for victories over the Greeks. 

107 Castle of St. Angelo. Huge circular tower on the 
bank of the Tiber, formerly the mausoleum of the emperor 
Hadrian; built 138 and after 410 turned into a fortress. 

107 St. Peter*s. Metropolitan church of the Roman 
497 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


See. Stands on reputed site of burial place of the Apostle 
Peter. Dedicated 1626. Its building, from foundation to 
dedication, occupied 120 years; the first plans for it were 
made in 1450, but Julius II really began the work in 1506. 

110 Pantheon. Erected by M. Vipsanius Agrippa 
B. C. 27. Only ancient building whose walls and vault- 
ing are well preserved. Believed to be a temple to all the 
gods. Dedicated A. D. 609 as a church under the name of 
Santa Maria ad Martyres, now called Santa Maria del la 
Rotonda, or simply La Rotonda. 

110 Golden House. Palace commenced by Nero, so 
called from its magnificence; it extended from the Palatine 
hill to the Esquiline. 

112 Piazza di Spagna. Square where many hotels and 
shops are situated. Flight of steps leads from it to the 
church of Trinita di Monti. 

112 The cripple whom St. Peter heals. Acts S. 

113 Fountain of the Triton. By Bernini. Situated in 
the Piazza Barberini; dolphins supporting open shell, upon 
which sits a Triton. 

114 A sculptors studio. Critics of Hawthorne agree 
that his observations on sculpture carry more weight than 
those on painting. He had a keen appreciation of the 
beauty of work in marble and was helped by his friend- 
ship with Hiram Powers, the American sculptor, an artist 
whose criticisms were always keen. 

115 Antonio Canova. 1757-1822. Born at Venice, 
but spent most of his life at Rome. In the classic revival 
of sculpture during the eighteenth century Canova was a 
leading spirit and attained great popularity. Modern criti- 
cism condemns many of his once most admired works with - 
out denying him an important place in art. His finest work 
is held to be his Theseus slaying a Centaur now at Vienna. 

498 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


119 Grey Friars Church, The Grey Friars is the 
name of the order of Franciscans in England and Ireland. 

121 Benvenuto Cellini. 1500-1569* This great metal 
worker of the Renaissance, according to his own story of 
his life, had also an astonishingly varied career as a soldier. 
His large works of sculpture, many of which have perished, 
show his genius outside the sphere in which he chiefly 
labored. His work in metals has never been surpassed. 
His Autobiography is one of the most extraordinary docu- 
ments in existence and gives ’ a racy picture of the man 
and his times. 

121 Loulie’s hand. Powers’s model of his child’s 
hand. 

121 Harriet Hosmer. This talented young American 
won the lasting friendship of Browning and his wife when 
at the age of twenty-two she charmed them by her inde- 
pendence, her womanliness and her great gift for sculp- 
ture. Mrs. Browning calls her “a great pet” of theirs. 
The Hawthornes were made free of the society of the 
Brownings and the group of friends which included the 
Storys, Mrs. Jameson, Miss Hosmer, Hiram Powers, 
Gibson and many others of high artistic reputation. Mrs. 
Browning describes Hawthorne as a man “not silent only 
by shyness, but by nature and inaptitude. He is a man, 
it seems, who talks wholly and exclusively with the pen, 
and who does not open out socially with his most intimate 
friends any more than with strangers. It isn’t his way 
to converse.” (Letters of Mrs. Browning.) 

124 John Gibson. 1790-1860. A native of Wales and 
pupil of Canova and Thorwaldsen. A man of deep 
earnestness who spent a life-time endeavoring to revive the 
spirit of classic sculpture, even coloring his work as the 
statues of ancient Greece were supposed to have been 
treated. The opinion of Hawthorne is the opinion of 

499 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


Palgrave^ and indeed of most critics: “One must regret 
a real gift and a remarkable industry misapplied.” 

125 Horatio Greenough. 1805-1852. Born in Boston; 
lived in Rome and Florence. He executed a statue of 
Washington for the Capitol; his group entitled The Rescue 
stands in the same place. His Chanting Cherubs was said 
to be the first work in marble by an American sculptor. 

125 Thomas Crawford. 1814-1857. Born in New 
York; lived in Rome and Munich. Among his works are 
a statue of Washington ort horseback^ a bronze bust of 
Washington at Richmond and a much-admired Indian 
Chief in the New York Historical society. 

126 John of Bologna. Giovanni Bologna. 1524-1608. 
Sculptor. Real name was Jean Boulogne. The “Rape of 
the Sabines,” one of his best known works, represents seiz- 
ure of Sabine women by followers of Romulus seeking 
wives. 

127 Octavius. Original name of Augustus, first 
emperor of Rome. 

128. As Aaron threw the gold of the Israelites. Exodus 
32:24. 

133 An esthetic company. The description of this 
evening among the artists is evidently taken from Haw- 
thorne’s experience as a guest of C. G. Thompson, who 
entertained his distinguished compatriots together with 
just such an “aesthetic company.” Mr. Thompson painted 
Prospero and Miranda; it is easy to identify the landscape 
painter as Mr. Ropes, Hawthorne’s neighbor at home, 
while the sculptor is, of course, Gibson the Englishman. 

135 Prospero and Miranda. Characters in Shake- 
speare’s “The Tempest.” 

135 The Angel leading forth St. Peter. Acts 12. 

140 Leonardo Da Vinci. 1452-1519. Chief of the 
school which in a measure combined the ideals of the schools 

500 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


of which Raphael and Michael Angelo were the heads. As 
an artist Da Vinci ranks perhaps next to these masters. 
In science he was no less great. Draper calls him the 
connecting link between Archimedes and the modern sci- 
entist. His achievements as engineer, botanist, geologist 
and chemist seem incredible. Modern science has not yet 
advanced beyond what he projected, and several of his 
inventions are in use today. He was also a sculptor, archi- 
tect and musician. His Last Supper and Mona Lisa are his 
best known paintings. The Modesty and Vanity here re- 
ferred to may have been painted by his pupil Luini. 

141 Archangel Michael. In painting it was the soft 
and bright art of Raphael and Guido that appealed 
especially to Hawthorne. “He did not,” says Professor 
George E. Woodberry, “become even an amateur in art 
and he probably knew it; he began too late to enter that 
world; and he contented himself with a moral sympathy, 
an apprehension of idea and feeling, rather than the seeing 
eye and understanding heart by which one takes possession 
of the artistic world as a free citizen there.” (Nathaniel 
Hawthorne.) Cardinal Pamfili, whose face Guido is said 
to have dra-wn in that of Satan, became Pope Innocent X. 

145 Fountain of Trevi. The fountain erected by 
Nicollo Salvi under Clement XII supplies Rome with 
water brought to them first by Agrippa, about 18 B. C. 
The pure spring from which aqueducts bring the water 
was pointed out to some soldiers by a young girl immortal- 
ized in legend. 

148 Corinne and Lord Neville. See Mme. de Stael’s 
novel Corinne. 

151 Piazza of the Holy Apostles. In front of Church 
of the Holy Apostles, founded in the sixth century and 
modernized, 1602, by Fontana. 

151 Trajan^ s Forum. Square about the Column of 
501 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


Trajan erected to commemorate the victories of Trajan 
over the Dacians. Trajan, Roman emperor, 98-117 A. D. 

153 Temple of Mars Ultor. The temple of Mars the 
Avenger was erected by Octavius to the memory of Julius 
Caesar after his murder. 

154 Temple of Peace. Templum Concordiae. Situ- 
ated in the west end of Forum, earliest building vowed 
367 B. C. by Camillus, the dictator, in gratitude for restor- 
ation of union of the patricians and plebeians. Now in 
ruins. 

154 Temple of Minerva. Many in ancient Rome; the 
national temple on the Capitoline hill was dedicated to 
Jupiter conjointly with Juno and Minerva. 

155 Byrons celebrated description. For Byron’s 
description of the Coliseum see Childe Harold, canto iv: 
139-145. 

156 The black cross and the shrines were removed in 
1874 to complete excavations begun by the French. 

I6l Arch of Constantine. Erected by Constantine the 
Great to commemorate his victory over Maxentius. Situated 
in valley between Palatine and Caelian hills. 

l6l Palace of the Caesars. Mass of buildings now in 
ruins. Built, rebuilt and enlarged by successive emperors; 
commenced by Augustus. Situated on the Palatine hill. 

I6l Arch of Titus. Erected to commemorate the tak- 
ing of Jerusalem by Titus and decorated with bas-reliefs 
of his triumph, showing the seven-branched candlestick and 
other trophies. The orthodox Jew will not pass beneath 
the arch which commemorates the despoiling of the temple. 

163 Curtius. In the year 362 B. C., says tradition, the 
earth in the forum opened and showed a chasm which sooth- 
sayers told could be closed only by the casting into it of 
Rome’s greatest treasure. Curtius, a Sabine, crying that a 
city’s greatest treasure was in those who would die for her 

502 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 

good, leaped into the chasm, which immediately closed over 
him. 

165 Virginia. The story of Virginia has been a popu- 
lar one with poets ; see especially Macaulay’s Lays of 
Ancient Rome. Appius Claudius, the “worst of all the 
wicked ten” who ruled Rome against the will of the people, 
conceived a passion for the young Virginia, daughter of 
Virginius, a distinguished citizen. He attempted to have 
her seized as his slave in the forum, and in the presence 
of the crowd her father killed her to prevent her dishonor. 
The uprising of the people that followed this act marked 
the beginning of popular rights in Rome. 

165 Via Sacra. The principal street of ancient Rome, 
which ran through the Forum Romanus, through the arch 
of Titus and up to the capitol. It was along this route 
that the triumphs passed and the street, therefore, along 
which all captives brought to Rome were led. 

166 Column of Phocas. Pillar 54 feet long standing 
in the Roman Forum, erected A. D. 6O8 in honor of 
Emperor Phocas, whose gilded statue originally crowned it. 

166 Augustan Age. So called from Emperor Augustus, 
patron of art and literature. 31 B. C. to 14 A. D. 

167 Appian Way. The chief southern road leading 
from Rome, begun by Appius Claudius 310 B. C. 

167 Piazza of the Campidoglio. Space between the 
two summits of the Capitoline hill, where Romulus formed 
his asylum. 

167 Statue of Marcus Aurelius. M. Aurelius Anto- 
ninus, Roman emperor, 121 - 180 , called the philosopher. 
He left a book of philosophical thoughts. Statue is in 
centre of the Piazza Caffarelli. 

170 Tarpeian rock. Tarpeia, daughter of the governor 
of the citadel on the Capitoline hill, was bribed by the 
Sabines to open the gate to them. On taking possession 

503 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


of the citadel they threw their shields upon her and crushed 
her to death. The rock on the Capitoline from which 
traitors were hurled was named for this first traitress of 
Rome. 

170 Senate House. Built by Tullius Hostilius; meet- 
ing place of the Senate; consecrated to Christian worship 
by Pope Honorus I. Still in a state of preservation. 

170 Jove*s temple. The temple of Jupiter Maximus, 
on Capitoline hill; built by Tarquinius Superbus. 

178 Pompey's Forum. Square about the place where 
stood the statue of Pompey the Great, at the base of which 
Caesar was murdered. 

189 The dead Capuchin. The description of the dead 
monk and the bleeding at the nostrils of the corpse is 
taken from Hawthorne’s own experience in the Capuchin 
church. He was deeply impressed with the strange occur- 
rence — “about as queer a thing as I have ever witnessed,” 
he writes. 

215 The Niobe of nations. In Childe Harold, 
canto iv:79^ Byron likens Rome to the queen turned into 
stone for too great pride in her children, who were slain 
by Apollo: 

The Niobe of nations, there she stands, 

Childless and crownless in her voiceless woe. 

216 Giotto (Anglioletto di Bondone). 1266-1336. 
Born near Florence. After working for some years in his 
native city and Assisi, his fame brought him an invitation 
to Rome from Benedict IX. He painted frescoes for old 
St. Peter’s, a few of which remain. Most notable among 
his later works are his frescoes for the Arena chapel in 
Padua. He was great among pre-Raphaelites especially in 
dramatic feeling and composition. 

216 Giovanni Cimahue. 1240-1302. Born at Florence; 

504 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


earliest of group of great Italian painters. Although drawn 
chiefly in the stiff* Byzantine fashion his figures have some 
motion. Most of his work, all of which was in churches, 
has perished. Practically untaught, the germ of originality 
in his work has won him the not very accurate title of f ather 
of Italian art. 

216 Perugino (Pietro Vannucei). 14)46-1524. Born 
at Perugia, but early went to Florence. He is a representa- 
tive of the mystic school that flourished in Umbria. His 
frescoes for the Sistine chapel were crowded out by Michael 
Angelo’s Last Judgment, but the Delivery of the Keys 
remains. Florence and Paris contain good specimens of his 
reverent paintings of religious subjects. Raphael was his 
pupil. 

216 The old villa or castle. In 1858 Hawthorne wrote 
in a letter to his friend Fields of his delight in his villa 
near Florence, from which Monte Beni is drawn. “At one 
end of the house there is a moss-grown tower, haunted by 
owls and by the ghost of a monk who was confined there 
in the thirteenth century previous to being burnt at the 
stake in the principal square of Florence. I hire this villa, 
tower and all, at 28 dollars a month, but I mean to take 
it away bodily and clap it into a romance which I have in 
my head, ready to be written out.” 

219 Galileo^s tower. Galilei Galileo. 1564-1642. 
The historic tower where the philosopher took his astro- 
nomical observations is situated outside Florence. 

225 Orvieto. A wine named from a city 79 miles 
northwest of Rome. 

236 Austrian lip. The disfiguring thick under lip of 
the Hapsburgs was a characteristic of the grand duke of 
Tuscany, opposite whom the Hawthornes had lived at 
Florence. ‘Tt is worth while,” wrote Mrs. Hawthorne 

505 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


expressing their common disgust, “to extinguish the race 
for the sake of expunging that lip and all it signifies.” 

255 Ponte Vecchio (Old bridge). Situated over the 
Arno. A covered way on it connects the Pitti arid Ufiizi 
palaces. 

257 Firenze. The Italian name for Florence. 

258 Titians Magdalen. Ruskin has a kindlier com- 
ment on the worship of beauty of form and color which 
crowded out, as Hawthorne here observes, the saintly 
ideals of earlier painters. “The Venetian mind,” says 
Ruskin, “and Titian’s especially as the centre of it, was 
wholly realistic, universal and manly. . . The human 
creature, though the highest of the animals, was neverthe- 
less a perfect animal, and his happiness, health and noble- 
ness depend on the due power of every animal passion as 
well as on the cultivation of every spiritual tendency.” 

258 The oratory at Monte Beni is described from that 
at Montauto, Hawthorne’s villa. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop 
writes in her reminiscences of her father: “The oratory 
was the most thrilling place of all. It opened out of 
my sister’s room, which was a large, sombre apartment. It 
was said to attract a frequently seen ghost, by the force 
of its historic twilight and historic sorrows; and my sister, 
who was courageous enough to startle a ghost, highly 
approved of this corner of her domain. But she suddenly 
lost her buoyant taste for disembodied spirits, and a rumor 
floated mistily about that Una had seen the wretched 
woman who could not forget her woes in death. In ‘Monte 
Beni’ this oratory is minutely pictured, where ‘beneath the 
crucifix. . . lay a human skull. . . carved in gray alabas- 
ter, most skillfully done. . . with accurate imitations of 
the teeth, the sutures, the empty eye-caverns.’ Everywhere 
the intense picturesqueness gave material, at Montauto, 
for my father’s romance.” 


506 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 

258 Pitti Palace. Royal palace in Florence, contain- 
ing one of the most celebrated collections of paintings in 
the world. 

258 Bambino (child). Specifically a figure of the 
child Jesus. One of the most famous of the bambini is in 
the church of the Ara Coeli, at Rome. 

282 Giallo antico and verd antique. The “old yellow” 
and “old green” marbles found among the ruins of Rome 
were used repeatedly in later buildings. 

295 Parcae. The Fates; Clotho, Lachesis, and Atro- 
pos. 

307 Sybil. The sybil who led ^neas through Hades 
had been in her youth beloved of Apollo. He offered her 
any gift she asked, and taking up a handful of sand she 
begged to be given as many years as she held grains in 
her palm. The request was granted, but she had not 
asked for youth, so she was destined to grow old during 
the thousand years and more allotted to her. 

308 Faded frescoes. The journey of Kenyon and 
Donatello follows that of Hawthorne and his family. 
Hawthorne was, as the narrative shows, deeply impressed 
with the country, through which are scattered many works 
of the pre-Raphaelites, painted on walls, and in many 
cases whitewashed over by some vandal and restored 
imperf ectly. 

308 Ghirlandio (Domenico Bijordi). 1449-1494. 
Born at Florence. His religious frescoes show the profound 
influence of the Renaissance; he was the master of Michael 
Angelo. “Without adding anything specially to the total 
amount of experience acquired by the efforts of successive 
searchers,” says Crowe, “he garnered up the whole of it 
within himself and combined it in support and illustration 
of the great maxims he had already treasured up, and thus 

507 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


conduced to the perfection of the masculine art of 
Florence.” 

308 Pinturicchio (Bernadino di Betto). 1454-1513. 
Born at Perugia and the most important follower of Peru- 
gino, without his depth of feeling or beauty of color. His 
principal works are the frescoes of the Piccolomini library 
at Siena^ formerly attributed in part to Raphael. 

310 Dante. The reference is to Paulo and Francesca^ 
Inferno, v:75. 

313 Atra Cura. Horace, Odes III:I: 

. . . sed Timor et Minae 
Scandunt eodem quo dominus, negue 
Decedit aerata triemi, et 
Post equitem sedet atra Cura. 

(But Fear and Threats can clamber fast 
As lords of land : in wealth’s despite 
On beakM yacht sits Care aghast 
And rides behind the mounted knight.) 

314 Fra Angelico (Giovanni di Fiesole). 1387-1455. 
To “Blessed Angelico,” beatified shortly after his death, 
was given “the glory of fixing in a series of imperishable 
visions, the religious ideal of the middle ages, just at the 
moment when it was about to disappear forever” (Lafen- 
estre). Living in the midst of the Renaissance he was 
a visionary altogether untouched by modern thought. He 
painted with prayer and fasting, never altering his work 
lest the change might be against the will of God. Tech- 
nically deficient though they are, before his paintings, to 
quote Vasari, “one is convinced that those blessed spirits 
can look no otherwise in heaven itself.” 

315 Church of San Domenico. This church was for- 
merly attached to a Dominican nunnery. It contains many 
fine paintings. 


508 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


336 Bariocchi. A copper coin, worth about one cent. 

338. Palazzo Colonna. The Colonna Palace. Begun 
in the fifteenth century by Martin V. Built near the site 
of the ancient fortress of the Colonna family. 

338 Palace of the Pamfili-Doria. Situated on the site 
once occupied by the gardens of Galba, where the murdered 
emperor is believed to have been buried. The house of 
Pamfili (Pamphili) was founded by a papal family. 

339 Madonna da Foligno. Painted by Raphael (1511), 
and placed over the altar of church of Ara Coeli ; now in the 

, Vatican. 

I 341 The Dutch conjurors. The Dutch masters of 
“the school of littleness” revolted against the sham senti- 
ment of the later Italians. Julian Hawthorne, writing of 
his father’s lack of technical knowledge in art matters, 
says: “He accepted and respected the Dutch masters 

because they came into direct rivalry with concrete nature 
and he could test the accuracy of their rendering by his 
own observation; but in the higher spheres of art he con- 
tinually found the beauty of the idea obstructed by the 
imperfection of the material and he could not be quite 
happy about it.” 

341 Teniers. David, the elder, 1582-1649. David, the 
younger, 1610-1690. 

341 Gerard Duorv. 1613-1675. 

341 Frans Van Mieris. 1635-1681. 

341 Flight into Egypt. In art representing the flight 
of Mary and Joseph with the infant Jesus. 

342 Pietas. Pictures representing the lamentation of 
the holy women over the body of Christ. 

342 Noli-me-Tangeres. Representations of the meet- 
ing between Mary Magdalen and the risen Christ whose 
first words were “Touch me not.” 

342 Sacrifice of Abraham. Genesis 22. 

509 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


34f2 Leda^s. In mythology, Leda was a beautiful 
woman, mother of Castor and Pollux by Zeus. 

34)2 La Fornarina. The Bakeress is the title given 
to what has been supposed to be Raphael’s portrait of 
Margarita, the woman he loved. There is no real reason 
for believing her to have been a baker’s daughter and it 
is very likely that Raphael’s pupils, not the master himself, 
painted the portrait. The face has been much criticized; 
it seems to one cold and bad, to another womanly and 
charming. 

344) Sodoma. 1477-1549. His Flagellation is now a 
ruined masterpiece; his San Sebastian, now in Florence, 
conceived in a similar spirit, is better preserved and con- 
sidered one of the finest heads in Italy. 

350 Ara Coeli. On the Capitoline hill, erected it is 
supposed on the site of the high altar of Augustus. 

351 St. John Lateran. The pope’s cathedral church, 
ranking above all Catholic churches. The Lateran palace 
was the ancient home of the popes. 

357 Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri). 1590- 
1666. A painter of the school of Bologna, where his work 
gained him a high reputation. Of his many works the best 
is probably the Sta. Petronilla. As a colorist he ranks 
high. 

374 Sirocco. Italian name for the southeast wind. 

374 Tramontana. The north wind. 

375 Bridge of St. Angelo. The ancient Pons iElius, 
built by Hadrian to connect his mausoleum with the Cam- 
pus. 

376 Ponte Molle. Built by Pius VII in 1815; the an- 
cient Pons Melvius, scene of the decisive victory gained by 
Constantine the Great over Maxentius. 

376 Constantine I (Flavius Valerius Aurelius). 274- 
334. Roman emperor, surnamed Magnus, the great. 

510 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


386 Bertel Thorrvaldsen. 1770-1844. Born in Den- 
mark of Icelandic ancestry^ and the greatest sculptor of the 
classic revival of his time. His work is praised for its sim- 
plicity, dignity and idealism as well as for its technical 
ability. In the opinion of critics Thorwaldsen approached 
nearer the spirit of antique art than any sculptor of modern 
times. 

387 Brutus, Marcus, The so-called tyrannicide. He 
murdered Julius Caesar in the hope of establishing the re- 
public again. 

394 Ghetto. Established by Pope Paul IV (1555-59) 
and abolished only in 1870. The Papal States were the last 
to give up the custom of confining the Jews in Ghettos. 

401 Montefiascone. Town of central Italy celebrated 
for its Muscat wine. 

406 Palazzo del Torre (Palace of the tower). Erected 
1450; west of the church of S. Antonio dei Portoghese. 

424 Gate of San Sebastianio. Named from the martyr 
Sebastian, originally commander of a company of Praeto- 
rian guards under Diocletian. 

426 Cecilia Mettella. Cecilia Mettella, wife of Cras- 
sus, the general whose passion for wealth brought him the 
surname of Dives, has been dead nearly 2000 years, but 
her tomb remains one of the best preserved monuments of 
antiquity. It was used as a fortress in the 13th century. 
Byron wrote of it (Childe Harold, canto iv) : 

There is a stem round tower of other days 
Firm as a fortress with its fence of stone, 

Such as an army’s baffled strength delays, 

Standing with half its battlements alone. 

And with two thousand years of ivy grown. 

The garland of eternity where wave 

The green leaves over all by time o’erthrown. 

What this tower of strength ? within its cave 

What treasure lay so locked, so hid ? — a woman s grave. 

511 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


426 Claudian aqueduct. One of the principal aque- 
ducts of ancient Rome^ built by the emperor Claudius; I 
originally twelve and one-half miles long. 

427 Cadmus. Cadmus^ whom legend credits with 

having introduced the alphabet into Europe^ was bidden [ 
by the Delphic oracle to seek a cow of a certain sort, follow } 
her and found a city where she should lie down. This was i 
the origin of the city of Thebes. j 

429 A headless figure of marble. Shortly before the j 
Hawthornes left Rome a statue, supposed to have been that i 
from which the Medician Venus was copied, was dug up | 
in the Campagna. Hawthorne visited the spot with 
W. W. Story the sculptor. i 

429 Venus de Medici. So called because the statue 
was first placed in the Villa Medici; now in the Tribune of 
the Uffizi, Florence. Found in the ruins of the portico of 
Octavia at Rome. Probably dates from the time of Augus- 
tus. Hawthorne had an especial fondness for this statue. 

444, Gobelin tapestry. A kind of tapestry manufac- 
tured in the Gobelin factory in the Faubourg St. Marcel, 
Paris. It takes its name from Gilles and Jean Gobelin, 
French tapestry-makers of the fifteenth century. 

445 Apples of Sodom. A fruit growing near the Dead 
sea. Though tempting in appearance, when ripe its rind 
contains only dark ashes and seeds. 

458 Claude Lorraine (Claude Gellee). 1600-1682. 
This great French master of landscape painting lived chiefly 
in Italy. He was the first artist to dignify the painting of 
nature. 

469 George Cuvier. 1769-1832. French naturalist 
and founder of the science of comparative anatomy. 

471 Convent of the Sacre Coeur. Adjoins the Trinita 
di Monti. A much-frequented place of education. The 
nuns are all persons of rank. 

512 


NOTES ON THE TEXT 


471 Church of the Trinita di Monti. Built by Charles 
VIII of France, 1495. In the French revolution it was 
plundered, but was restored by Louis XVIII in 1817. 

477 Paul Akers (Benjamin). Sculptor of Sacarappa, 
Maine. Born 10 July 1825, studied in Boston and in 
Florence. 

477 William Wetmore Story. Sculptor and author. 
18 19-1 895. Among his best known productions is xhe 
statue of Cleopatra. 

477 Roger Randolph. American sculptor. 1825-1892. 
The huge door, representing scenes in the life of Columbus, 
was designed for the rotunda of the capitol at Washington 
by Randolph. 

478 James Thomas Fields. 1817-1881. Author and 
publisher. Member of publishing house of Ticknor & 
Fields, publishers of Hawthorne’s works. 

479 John Lothrop Motley. 1804-1877. American his- 
torian. Author of Rise of the Dutch Republic. 

480 Midas. King of Phrygia, who, when judging a 
musical contest between Pan and Apollo, gave the prize to 
Pan. Apollo changed his ears into those of an ass. 

480 A Virtuoso*s collection. A story in Hawthorne’s 
Mosses from an Old Manse. 

483 G. P. L. George Parsons Lathrop, son-in-law and 
authorized biographer of Hawthorne. 


513 


A LIST OF AUTHORITIES 


The Makers of Florence. Mrs. Oliphant. 

Mornings in Florence. John Ruskin. 

Guide de Florence et ses Environs. A. Bettini. 

A Day in Ancient Rome. Edgar S. Shumway. 

Cities of Central Italy. Augustus J. Hare. 

History of Rome. T. Mommsen. 

Manual of Roman Antiquities. T. Mommsen and J. Mar- 
quardt, translated (Humbert). 

An Outline History of Rome. John H. Vincent and James 
R. Joy. 

Rome and its Environs. John Murray. 

Painters and their Works. Ralph N. James. 

Book of the Artists. H. T. Tuckerman. 

History of Ancient Art. Franz von Reber. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife. Julian Hawthorne. 

A Study of Hawthorne. G. P. Lathrop. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. George E. Woodberry. 

Memories of Hawthorne. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop. 
Vasari’s Lives of Eminent Artists. 


514 


CONTENTS 


Chapter 

Page 

1 

Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon, Donatello 

5 

2 

The Faun 

12 

3 

Subterranean Reminiscences 

20 

4 

The Spectre of the Catacomb 

28 

5 

Miriam’s Studio 

37 

6 

The Virgin’s Shrine 

51 

7 

Beatrice 

62 

8 

The Suburban Villa 

70 

9 

The Faun and Nymph 

77 

10 

The Sylvan Dance 

85 

11 

Fragmentary Sentences 

92 

12 

A Stroll on the Pincian 

99 

13 

A Sculptor’s Studio 

114 

14 

Cleopatra 

124 

15 

An Aesthetic Company 

133 

16 

A Moonlight Ramble 

144 

17 

Miriam’s Trouble 

155 

18 

On the Edge of a Precipice 

163 

19 

The Faun’s Transformation 

174 

20 

The Burial Chant 

180 

21 

The Dead Capuchin 

189 

22 

The Medici Gardens 

198 

23 

Miriam and Hilda 

204 

24 

The Tower among the Apennines 

215 

25 

Sunshine 

223 

26 

The Pedigree of Monte Beni 

233 

27 

Myths 

245 


515 


CONTENTS 


Chapter Page 

28 The Owl Tower 255 

29 On the Battlements 263 

30 Donatello’s Bust 274 

31 The Marble Saloon 281 

32 Scenes by the Way 293 

33 Pictured Windows 305 

34 Market-day in Perugia 314 

35 The Bronze Pontiff’s Benediction 321 

36 Hilda’s Tower 330 

37 The Emptiness of Picture Galleries 338 

38 Altars and Incense 349 

39 The World’s Cathedral 359 

40 Hilda and a Friend 368 

41 Snow-drops and Maidenly Delights 379 

42 Reminiscences of Miriam 388 

43 The Extinction of a Lamp 396 

44 The Deserted Shrine 405 

45 The Flight of Hilda’s Doves 415 

46 A Walk on the Campagna 424 

47 The Peasant and Contadina 432 

48 A Scene in the Corso 442 

49 A Frolic of the Carnival 450 

50 Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon, Donatello 46 1 

Preface by the author 474 

Introductory note by G. P. Lathrop 478 

Editorial note 483 

Life of the author 484 

Story of the book 488 

Notes on the text 49 1 K 

List of authorities 514 [■ 

Advertising matter 517 f 


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